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MIT News is dedicated to communicating to the media and the public the news and achievements of the students, faculty, staff and the greater MIT community.enTue, 26 Sep 2017 17:10:01 -0400Johan Rockström: Presenting a framework for preserving Earth’s resiliencehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/johan-rockstrom-framework-for-preserving-earth-resilience-0926
Stockholm Resilience Center executive director and Stockholm University professor speaks at the Environmental Solutions Initiative’s People and the Planet lecture series.Tue, 26 Sep 2017 17:10:01 -0400Stephanie M. McPherson | Environmental Solutions Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/johan-rockstrom-framework-for-preserving-earth-resilience-0926<p>The Earth is entering a new global epoch, and the continuation of humanity as we know it depends on our ability to preserve Earth’s resilience through sustainable actions. That was the take-home message from Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Center and professor of environmental science at Stockholm University. He spoke on Tuesday, Sept. 19 for the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative’s first People and the Planet lecture of the academic year.</p>
<p>“It’s the narrative of human survival,” Rockström said. “The ability to navigate the future for … at least 9, potentially even 10 billion co-citizens on Earth [by 2050], all with the same right to good lives.”</p>
<p>Rockström is best known for his <a href="https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/" target="_blank">2009 proposal</a> identifying specific limits to Earth’s various systems. He called these limits <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html" target="_blank">planetary boundaries</a> and warned that should we exceed them, we may no longer enjoy the life-sustaining balance between nature and human progress.</p>
<p>The nine boundaries — which include climate change, biodiversity loss, the biogeochemical cycle on Earth, ocean acidification, land use, fresh water availability, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol levels, and chemical pollution — are meant as scientifically determined sustainability guidelines for governments and corporations.</p>
<p>“It is fundamentally about reconnecting the world economy to the biosphere,” says Rockström. “It’s ... such an incredibly fundamental part of our world development and … we are today putting all of this at risk.”</p>
<p>Socioeconomic systems around the world are based on the Earth’s capacity to absorb the impact of humanity. But the growth of that impact has accelerated dramatically, particularly in the time period since the second World War. Sixty-seven percent of vertebrate wildlife species is projected to be extinct by 2020. Fifty percent of the Australian Great Barrier Reef has already died. Changes to the atmosphere render 2 degrees Celsius of warming to the planet a distinct possibility. As planetary boundaries reach their tipping points, the Earth’s ability to recalibrate in response will diminish.</p>
<p>According to Rockström, if we avoid transgressing planetary boundaries we can maintain a semblance of the biosphere balance we enjoyed during the Holocene epoch of Earth history. The Holocene, which began approximately 11,500 years ago at the end of the last ice age, was a Garden of Eden of sorts. The gentle fluctuations in average global temperature allowed humanity to develop agriculture and take advantage of the Earth’s resources in a more organized manner.</p>
<p>“We were … a small world on a big planet,” Rockström said of our Holocene existence. Many experts say we are now at the dawn of the Anthropocene epoch, marked by the start of nuclear testing in the 1950s. It’s the first epoch in Earth’s 4.5 billion years during which humans are the main drivers of change in natural global systems.</p>
<p>Leaving the Holocene means entering the unknown. “The Holocene is the only equilibrium of the planet that we know for certain can support humanity as we know it,” he said. “We have no evidence to suggest that we could morally and ethically support 9.5 billion co-citizens with a minimum standard of good lives [outside of Holocene conditions].”</p>
<p>Despite current political uncertainties, Rockström is hopeful. He sees a path forward in the Carbon Law, the idea of halving carbon emissions every decade. (He laid out a <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6331/1269" target="_blank">decade-by-decade plan</a> to this end in the March 2017 issue of<em> Science.</em>) This can be done on every scale, he said, from governments to businesses to individuals.</p>
<p>This isn’t an unobtainable utopia. John Sterman, the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at the&nbsp;MIT&nbsp;Sloan School of Management observed that, “Johan’s work shows clearly that humanity has already overshot the carrying capacity of the Earth. The good news is that we can change this dire situation: More and more governments, companies and individuals are taking action to create, deploy and scale the technologies and policies we need to build a sustainable world in which all can thrive.”</p>
<p>Many governments (including Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden) and businesses (such as clothing retailer <a href="http://hmfoundation.com/focus-area/planet/" target="_blank">H&amp;M</a> and auto manufacturer Volvo) have already adopted the planetary boundaries framework. The use of renewable energy sources is doubling every 5.4 years; continuing that rate of growth is a key strategy to phase out the use of fossil fuels and achieve full decarbonization of the economy by 2050, according to Rockström.</p>
<p>ESI Director John Fernandez shares this vision and suggests a key role for MIT. “The transformative role of technology — the development of low carbon energy supplies, the electrification of cities, the creation of economically viable and effective methods to recover and reuse key materials — this is MIT’s sandbox,” he said. “Much will come not from doom and gloom, but from the excitement that motivates discovery and invention and the accompanying optimism and responsibility about the real possibility for a deeply sustainable world.”</p>
<p>Rockstöm’s lecture ended on an encouraging note. “We’re starting to see signs of planetary stewardship,” he said. “For the first time ever, humanity has a road map for people and planet. … The light at the end of the tunnel is real.”</p>
<p>ESI’s People and the Planet Lecture Series presents individuals and organizations working to advance understanding and action toward a humane and sustainable future. On Nov. 20, the second fall lecture will feature Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.</p>
Johan Rockstrom speaks at the Environmental Solutions Initiative's first People and the Planet lecture of 2017. Photo: Casey AtkinsSpecial events and guest speakers, Climate change, Climate, Energy, Global Warming, Greenhouse gases, Renewable energy, Environment, Sustainability, Policy, ESI, Earth and atmospheric sciencesErnest Moniz addresses threats of nuclear weapons and climatehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/ernest-moniz-addresses-threats-nuclear-weapons-and-climate-0922
In MIT’s Compton Lecture, former U.S. energy secretary speaks on global security risks.
Fri, 22 Sep 2017 16:30:00 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/ernest-moniz-addresses-threats-nuclear-weapons-and-climate-0922<p>Ernest J. Moniz, who in January left his position as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Energy, spoke on Thursday about his long and ongoing history at MIT, and about his current work focusing on two major threats the world faces: nuclear weapons and global climate change, both of which were central to his role in the last administration.</p>
<p>The talk, held before an overflow crowd in MIT’s Huntington Hall, was part of the Institute’s Compton Lecture series that has continued since 1957. President L. Rafael Reif introduced Moniz, who is the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems Emeritus and special advisor to the MIT president, and noted that Moniz’ “record of accomplishment that would stand out in any context.” This record includes his years as chair of the Department of Physics, his role as founding head of the MIT Energy Initiative, and his three tours of duty in Washington. Moniz served twice in the Clinton administration and then for four years in the Obama administration, when he was appointed to run the Department of Energy by a 97 to 0 vote in the Senate.</p>
<p>In that post, Moniz said he had the great opportunity of working for a president who “put the clean energy and climate agenda and the nuclear security agenda very high in their set of priorities.” As a result, he was able to play a major role in the achievement of two significant international agreements: the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear pact, both of which were finalized in 2015.</p>
<p>The two global threats that these agreements addressed are very different in nature, he said: Whereas the use of nuclear weapons would be a rapidly devastating event, climate change “is more like a slow-motion train wreck.” Back in 1992, he said, when he began his first stint at the DoE, “it seemed that we were on a path to managing both problems.” That year saw the signing of the Kyoto agreement on climate change, which, he reminded the audience, is a treaty, ratified by the Senate, calling for stabilization of greenhouse gases at a level that is sustainable. “We are committed to that,” he said. In addition, negotiations led to the beginning of drastic reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles.</p>
<p>But the road since then has been far from smooth, and now the Paris Agreement on climate change, which Moniz helped to negotiate on behalf of the U.S., is under threat from the new administration and its energy secretary. “Bluntly, especially from the point of view of a policymaker, in my view it is completely laughable to say that the state of the science is not one on which we should take a prudent approach,” he said, noting that the Paris accord, to which 197 nations all agreed, represented such a prudent approach.</p>
<p>Given the U.S. Congress’s insistence, in passing the Kyoto agreement, that there be full international participation, the consensus reached in Paris represented a significant victory, he said: “This path has led us to where we want to go.”</p>
<p>Under the terms of that agreement, Moniz pointed out, the earliest the U.S. could actually withdraw from it, as the Trump administration has pledged, would be Nov. 4 2020, at the very end of its term.</p>
<p>He pointed out that with a single storm, hurricane Irma, a single company, Florida Power and Light, faced an estimated $4 billion in recovery costs. As such storms increase in intensity in a warming world, he said, “it’s a lot cheaper to mitigate than to adapt later. …There’s no going back.”</p>
<p>“We are going to a low-carbon future,” he added. “It’s clearly in the cards. If we don’t pursue the course, we’ll get to the same place, but it will be a rougher road.”</p>
<p>The transition to that worldwide low-carbon energy future, he said, “means there will be a multi-trillion-dollar market. No matter what you think on the climate side, decreasing our research programs doesn’t make sense.”</p>
<p>As for the threat posed by nuclear weapons, “the risk of a misunderstanding leading to the use of a nuclear weapon is probably higher today than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis,” he said.</p>
<p>To try to mitigate that threat, Moniz joined with former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn at a nonprofit organization called the Nuclear Threat Initiative, where Moniz is now the CEO. The organization advocates for negotiations, modeled on some nuclear weapons reduction programs that worked in the 1980s, to address the threats of weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p>One significant accomplishment toward that end, he said, was the nuclear pact that he, along with then-Secretary of State John Kerry, negotiated with Iran. The highly technical agreement, which included meticulously detailed plans for verification measures, was made possible in part by the fact that of the four-person negotiating team – Kerry, Moniz, and their Iranian counterparts – three had PhDs from American universities (two of them from MIT), and all of them were able to negotiate in English without needing translators.</p>
<p>That agreement, he said, with its strong verification, “buys us a decade or 15 years of time, which could be used wisely” to negotiate further. If, instead, this administration fails to certify Iran’s compliance, “even though the IAEA says they are doing everything they are supposed to do, our European friends [who are also party to the agreement] are going to be not happy. That’s one more opportunity to put a wedge between us and our allies.”</p>
<p>As for North Korea, he said, an approach is needed that looks more broadly at the situation rather than just focusing on the nuclear weapons. “We have not had a serious dialog with China; we are not addressing all the issues that China is concerned with,” he said.</p>
<p>“I think that we do need to restart diplomacy. And that does not consist of choosing the most colorful words you can think of. We need to get a framework together that addresses all of our security concerns. … We have got to get back into the business of diplomacy, and then we can get to some progress.”</p>
Professor Ernest Moniz speaks at the 2017 Karl Taylor Compton Lecture, titled “Reducing Global Threats: Climate Change and Nuclear Security.”
Photo: Jake BelcherCompton lecture, Special events and guest speakers, President L. Rafael Reif, Faculty, Energy, Climate change, Nuclear security and policy, Government, Politics, Policy, Technology and societyKerry Emanuel: This year’s hurricanes are a taste of the futurehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/kerry-emanuel-hurricanes-are-taste-future-0921
Climate scientist describes physics behind expected increase in storm strength due to climate change.Thu, 21 Sep 2017 16:30:00 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/kerry-emanuel-hurricanes-are-taste-future-0921<p>In a detailed talk about the history and the underlying physics of hurricanes and tropical cyclones, MIT Professor Kerry Emanuel yesterday explained why climate change will cause such storms to become much stronger and reach peak intensity further north, heightening their potential impacts on human lives in coming years.</p>
<p>“Climate change, if unimpeded, will greatly increase the probability of extreme events,” such as the three record-breaking hurricanes of recent weeks, he said.</p>
<p>In Houston, Hurricane Harvey, which devastated parts of the Texas coastline and produced more total rainfall than any U.S. hurricane on record, would have been considered a one-in-2,000-years event during the 20th century, according to the best available reconstructions of the past record of such storms, Emanuel said. But in the 21st century, that probability could drop to one in 100 years, given the likely trajectory of climate change conditions. Hurricane Irma, with its record-breaking duration as a Category 5 storm, will go from being a one-in-800-years event in the area of the Caribbean that suffered a direct hit, to a one-in-80-years event by the end of this century, he said.</p>
<p>Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science and co-director of the Lorenz Center at MIT, has long been considered one of the leading researchers on tropical storms including hurricanes and cyclones (which is the name for such storms in the Pacific Ocean), the physical mechanisms that generate them, and the reconstruction of their past frequency and intensity. Ron Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science and director of the Center for Global Change Science, said in introducing Emanuel’s talk, “I can’t think of a better person in the world to address this issue of hurricanes,” including what he called the “2017 hurricane train” with its succession of huge storms.</p>
<p>In fact, although his talk had been titled “What Do Hurricanes Harvey and Irma Portend?” Emanuel pointed out that now there was “a tragic irony in presenting this lecture just hours after another hurricane [Maria] has devastated Puerto Rico.” At such a time, he said, “it is natural to ask if these are just natural events.” Referring to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s recent comments that it was inappropriate to talk about climate change in relation to hurricanes Harvey and Irma, Emanuel wondered aloud “if after 9/11 he would have said that now is not a good time to talk about terrorism?”</p>
<p>Already, over the last four decades, he said, hurricanes and cyclones globally have caused an average of $700 billion in damages annually since 1971. Meanwhile, thanks to population growth and the development of oceanfront property, “the global population exposed to hurricanes has tripled since 1970,” he said.</p>
<p>While hurricanes, like earthquakes and volcanoes, “are part of nature,” Emanuel said, “what we’re talking about are unnatural disasters — disasters we cause by building structures” in places that are inherently vulnerable to such devastating forces.</p>
<p>Because of policies, including the current system of federally provided flood insurance that gives private insurers little motivation to study countermeasures, he said, “we’re going to be having Harveys, Irmas, and Marias as far as the eye can see.”</p>
<p>While much of the news coverage of hurricanes focuses on the powerful winds, which have indeed been a major cause of damage and loss of life in the islands pummeled by Irma and Maria, Emanuel said that overall it is water, not wind, that causes the vast majority of damage from such storms, though most people underestimate the severity of the water impact. To illustrate the point, he showed a short, dramatic video of a hurricane-produced storm surge striking a building. “It is hydrodynamically the same thing as a tsunami,” he explained, as the clip showed water rushing steadily in and quickly engulfing an entire house.</p>
<p>“I wish everyone who lives in zones subject to these storms could see films like this,” he said, adding that the scene depicted was clearly not survivable. “Water is the big killer.”</p>
<p>Part of the difficulty in providing strong, clear documentation of the increasing intensity of hurricanes is the sparsity of the historical records. “Prior to 1943, everything we know about hurricanes on the planet comes from anecdotal accounts,” he said, especially those provided by ships’ logs and news accounts in coastal cities. Still, Emanuel and others have devised a variety of ingenious ways of deducing the hurricane record over much longer periods, using techniques such as taking cores from coastal lagoons to reveal periods when storm surges drove quantities of beach sand far inland, and analyzing the annual rates of shipwrecks over a period of centuries.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the use of new methods, including a technique for deriving wind speed information from the radio signals from GPS navigational satellites, are starting to provide an unprecedented degree of detail of the internal dynamics of these storms, which should enable researchers to continue to refine their models and may ultimately allow for more accurate forecasting of hurricanes. While projecting of hurricane tracks has already improved greatly, he said, the ability to predict the strength of coming storms is not yet as good.</p>
<p>Emanuel said his calculations of the physics behind the formation and growth of hurricanes indicate that the storms’ strength will continue to increase as the climate warms, but that there are inherent limits to that growth. At some point the maximum size of such storms will begin to level off, he said.</p>
<p>But those limits are still far off. For the near term, Emanuel said that U.S. rainfall events as intense as that produced by hurricane Harvey, which had about a 1 percent annual likelihood in the 1990s, has already increased in likelihood to about 6 percent annually, and by 2090 could be about 18 percent.</p>
Kerry Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science and co-director of the Lorenz Center at MITPhoto: Helen HillSpecial events and guest speakers, Faculty, Climate change, Energy, Policy, Politics, Sustainability, Research, EAPS, Government, School of Science, Global Warming, Earth and atmospheric sciencesThe Engine announces investments in first group of startups https://news.mit.edu/2017/the-engine-announces-investments-first-group-startups-0919
New venture launched by MIT will support “tough-tech” companies at work on transformative ideas that take time to commercialize.Tue, 19 Sep 2017 00:05:00 -0400Rob Matheson | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/the-engine-announces-investments-first-group-startups-0919<p><a href="http://www.engine.xyz/">The Engine</a>, founded last year by MIT, today announced investments in its first group of seven startups that are developing innovations poised for transformative impact on aerospace, renewable energy, synthetic biology, medicine, and other sectors.</p>
<p>The founding startups will be featured today at an event to celebrate the official opening of The Engine’s headquarters at 501 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, now renovated to include three floors of conference rooms, makerspaces, labs with cutting-edge equipment, computer stations, and other amenities.</p>
<p>The seven startups are:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.analyticalspace.com/">Analytical Space</a>, developing systems that provide no-delay, high-speed data from space, to address global challenges such as precision agriculture, climate monitoring, and city planning;</li>
<li>Baseload Renewables, developing ultra low-cost energy storage to replace fossil baseload generation with renewable energy to successfully reduce carbon on a global level;</li>
<li><a href="http://www.c2sense.com/">C2Sense</a>, building a digital olfactory sensor for industrial use cases such as food, agriculture, and worker safety, and transforming smell into real-time data that can be accessed remotely;</li>
<li><a href="http://isee.ai/">iSee</a>, delivering the next generation of humanistic artificial intelligence technology for human and robotic collaborations, including autonomous vehicles;</li>
<li>Kytopen, accelerating the development of genetically engineered cells by developing technology that modifies microorganisms 10,000 times faster than current state-of-the-art methods;</li>
<li><a href="http://www.suonobio.com/">Suono Bio</a>, enabling ultrasonic targeted delivery of therapeutics and macromolecules across tissues without the need for reformulation or encapsulation; and</li>
<li><a href="https://www.viaseparations.com/">Via Separations</a>, developing a materials technology for industrial separation processes that uses 10 times less energy than traditional methods.</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="http://news.mit.edu/2016/mit-announces-the-engine-for-entrepreneurs-1026">Announced</a> last October, The Engine combines funding and an open network of technical facilities to provide stable financial support and access to costly resources. It focuses on startups developing “tough” technologies — breakthrough ideas that require time to commercialize — in a range of sectors including robotics, manufacturing and materials, health, biotechnology, and energy.</p>
<p>“As we look at the first seven companies we have invested in, it is wonderful to see the breadth of tough-tech areas founders have leaned into,” says Katie Rae, president and CEO of The Engine. “We have been so gratified by the quality and passion of the founders that have come to us. These entrepreneurs are on a mission, and with our help they are going to change the world for the better.”</p>
<p>In January, MIT announced the creation of <a href="https://ewg.mit.edu/">The Engine Working Groups</a>, charged with guiding the development of Institute policies and procedures related to The Engine, and an <a href="http://ewg.mit.edu/idea-bank">Idea Bank</a> for MIT community members and alumni to provide input. In February, the program secured funding and established its <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2017/the-engine-katie-rae-president-ceo-0213">leadership</a>, and in April it closed its <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2017/the-engine-closes-first-fund-150-million-0406">first investment fund</a> with more than $150 million to support the startups. Since then, additional funds have been raised, for an updated total of $200 million.</p>
<p>“We announced The Engine nearly a year ago with the vision of supporting innovative ventures working to address society's most important challenges,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif says. “I am thrilled that the first cohort of startups has the potential to do exactly that. I have watched The Engine's evolution with great enthusiasm and admiration, and I look forward to this exciting next step in making The Engine's bold vision a reality.”</p>
<p><strong>A running start</strong></p>
<p>The startups have already begun benefiting from The Engine.</p>
<p>Shreya Dave PhD ’16 and Brent Keller PhD ’16, co-founders of Via Separations, have drawn on the tight-knit community growing inside The Engine, where advice and feedback are just around the corner. Joined by MIT professor of materials science and engineering Jeffrey Grossman and industry expert Karen Golmer, the team has been at The Engine since July. “Instead of sending out a million emails and asking for advice, we can literally walk next door and ask advice on company or customer problems,” Dave says.</p>
<p>Membranes today are predominantly polymers that filter out particles from liquids; examples include removing salt during water desalination or sifting out ingredients for pharmaceuticals or foods. These membranes are low-cost and efficient, but cannot withstand high temperatures, intense cleaning, and harsh environments, so some industries turn to power-hungry thermal-separation processes. Via Separations’ graphene oxide membranes, however, are more resilient than polymers and can operate in the streams polymers cannot. According to the startup, its membrane can replace thermal separation in many industries, cutting energy use by 90 percent. The startup now has a working prototype and is in talks with potential customers.</p>
<p>The Engine’s patient capital has been a major help for the startup, which emerged from a project in the J-WAFS Solutions program, a commercialization grant of the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab administered in partnership with the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. “Our development timeline will take a few years, with key milestones in design scale up, manufacturing, and customer agreements. But when we do it, it is going to have huge impact. With the Engine’s community and support, we have the resources to support a stellar team,” Dave says. &nbsp;</p>
<p>Also appreciative of The Engine’s patient capital is MIT professor of mechanical engineering Cullen Buie, another first-time entrepreneur who co-founded the two-month-old Kytopen. “The Engine is betting on us. I don’t know how many venture capitalists would bet on where we are today,” Buie says. “We could have stayed in the lab a little longer, but it wouldn’t get going nearly as fast. The Engine is helping us throw some gas on the idea and accelerate what we’re doing.”</p>
<p>Kytopen is developing a platform to enable extremely high-throughput cell engineering. To genetically engineer organisms, scientists expose cells to an electric field, which opens pores within the cell membrane, allowing customized DNA to flow into the cell. But scientists must zap the cells one batch at a time to find the right electric field that can open the cells but not kill them, which can be a months-long process.</p>
<p>Buie and his Kytopen co-founder, MIT research scientist Paulo Garcia, developed a microfluidics device that shocks cells continuously. Then they integrated the device’s components into a pipette tip, meaning scores of cells can be zapped as the flow through. In one pipette channel, the startup can process the equivalent of 80 tests per minute. Systems already exist that process 96 and 384 pipette samples in parallel, which makes the process potentially 10,000 times faster than traditional methods. “We take the guts of microfluidics and put it in a pipette tip which … makes it amenable to automation and scaling,” Buie says.</p>
<p><strong>Power of proximity</strong></p>
<p>The Engine’s central location is also beneficial for startups such as Baseload Renewables, whose founders and employees are transitioning into the startup life from MIT and other jobs. “We’re four co-founders of this company, and two of us live within walking distance of The Engine,” says MIT professor of materials science and engineering Yet-Ming Chiang. “It makes it easy for us to meet, get early research started, and have a smooth transition from lab to commercial product.”</p>
<p>Baseload Renewable’s battery system is based on cheap, readily available, and energy-dense sulfur dissolved in water as the anode, with an equally low-cost cathode.</p>
<p>Because the components are low-cost and allow for great energy-density, the system can store electricity from renewable sources for long durations — multiple days to months — for about a fifth to a tenth the cost of traditional battery storage for the grid. Today’s traditional lithium-ion batteries cost more than $300 per kilowatt hour and may only drop to about $150 per kilowatt hour, Chiang says.</p>
<p>The aim is to use the system for baseload power — the minimum demand on an electrical grid over a span of time — which currently relies on systems that produce a lot of carbon emissions. “Anyone in the energy industry will recognize that turning renewable energy into baseload electricity available all day, every day, is an extremely ambitious goal,” Chiang says. “But The Engine is allowing us to get a running start at it.”</p>
<p><strong>Fresher food, safer cars, better health</strong></p>
<p>The other founding startups’ goals are similarly ambitious.</p>
<p>Analytical Space, founded by Harvard Business School graduates, aims to make downloading satellite data much faster. Every few hours, terabytes of data are collected by orbiting satellites, but downloading that data is becoming very costly and complex. The startup is building small satellite relays that use laser communication to enable continuous high-speed wireless connectivity between space and ground. The startup is now preparing to launch its first pilot on a SpaceX craft from the International Space Station later this year.</p>
<p>C2Sense, which emerged from work supported by the Deshpande Center, aims to bring gas sensing to the so-called internet of things by creating a “digital olfactory” platform for industrial use. The startup has developed low-cost sensors that detect and measure a range of chemical substances in food that indicate rot as well as toxic gases, to help ensure worker safety and environmental protection. In one of its first use cases, the startup’s sensing technologies could “smell” when apples were ripening by detecting tiny amounts of ethylene, a gas that promotes ripening in plants.</p>
<p>iSee AI is developing a missing piece of the self-driving car puzzle — the next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) driven by a common sense engine. To begin such a monumental task, the team is taking inspiration from computational cognitive science to develop a fundamentally different approach to achieve a fully autonomous driving system. By building and applying a common sense engine to this space, iSee is able to effectively model a variety of behaviors of different occurrences on the road and quickly deal with new situations.</p>
<p>Suono Bio’s drug delivery platform uses ultrasound waves to rapidly deliver drugs, proteins, vaccines, and other molecules directly into the gastrointestinal tract to treat inflammatory bowel disease and other disorders that are difficult to treat. When a fluid is exposed to ultrasound waves, tiny bubbles form that then implode to create microjets that penetrate and push the drugs into tissue. The drugs absorb about 22 times faster than the traditional treatment method using enemas, where drugs must be kept in the colon for eight to 12 hours.</p>
Courtesy of The EngineThe Engine, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E), Startups, Invention, Industry, Business and management, Kendall Square, Community, cambridge, Cambridge, Boston and region, President L. Rafael Reif, Energy, Renewable energy, Bioengineering and biotechnology, Aeronautical and astronautical engineering, Data, Sensors, Artificial intelligence, Medical devices, Synthetic biology, Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS), Deshpande CenterA new approach to ultrafast light pulseshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/new-approach-ultrafast-light-pulses-0918
Unusual fluorescent materials could be used for rapid light-based communications systems.Mon, 18 Sep 2017 10:30:00 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/new-approach-ultrafast-light-pulses-0918<p>Two-dimensional materials called molecular aggregates are very effective light emitters that work on a different principle than typical organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) or quantum dots. But their potential as components for new kinds of optoelectronic devices has been limited by their relatively slow response time. Now, researchers at MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, and Northeastern University have found a way to overcome that limitation, potentially opening up a variety of applications for these materials.</p>
<p>The findings are described in the journal <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,</em> in a paper by MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering Nicholas X. Fang, postdocs Qing Hu and Dafei Jin, and five others.</p>
<p>The key to enhancing the response time of these 2-D molecular aggregates (2DMA), Fang and his team found, is to couple that material with a thin layer of a metal such as silver. The interaction between the 2DMA and the metal that is just a few nanometers away boosts the speed of the material’s light pulses more than tenfold.</p>
<p>These 2DMA materials exhibit a number of unusual properties and have been used to create exotic forms of matter, known as Bose-Einstein condensates, at room temperature, while other approaches required extreme cooling. They have also been applied in technologies such as solar cells and light-harvesting organic antennas. But the new work for the first time identifies the strong influence that a very close sheet of metal can have on the way these materials emit light.</p>
<p>In order for these materials to be useful in devices such as photonic chips — which are like semiconductor chips but carry out their operations using light instead of electrons — “the challenge is to be able to switch them on and off quickly,” which had not been possible before, Fang says.</p>
<p>With the metal substrate nearby, the response time for the light emission dropped from 60 picoseconds (trillionths of a second) to just 2 picoseconds, Fang says: “This is pretty exciting, because we observed this effect even when the material is 5 to 10 nanometers away from the surface,” with a spacing layer of polymer in between. That’s enough of a separation that fabricating such paired materials in quantity should not be an overly demanding process. “This is something we think could be adapted to roll-to-roll printing,” he says.</p>
<p>If used for signal processing, such as sending data by light rather than radio waves, Fang says, this advance could lead to a data transmission rate of about 40 gigahertz, which is eight times faster than such devices can currently deliver. This is “a very promising step, but it’s still very early” as far as translating that into practical, manufacturable devices, he cautions.</p>
<p>The team studied only one of the many kinds of molecular aggregates that have been developed, so there may still be opportunities to find even better variations. “This is actually a very rich family of luminous materials,” Fang says.</p>
<p>Because the responsiveness of the material is so strongly influenced by the exact proximity of the nearby metal substrate, such systems could also be used for very precise measuring tools. “The interaction is reduced as a function of the gap size, so it could now be used if we want to measure the proximity of a surface,” Fang says.</p>
<p>As the team continues its studies of these materials, one next step is to study the effects that patterning of the metal surface might have, since the tests so far only used flat surfaces. Other questions to be addressed include determining the useful lifetimes of these materials and how they might be extended.</p>
<p>Fang says a first prototype of a device using this system might be produced “within a year or so.”</p>
<p>The team also included Soon Hoon Nam at MIT; Jun Xiao, Xiaoze Liu, and Xiang Zhang at UC Berkeley; and Yongmin Liu at Northeastern University. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.</p>
In this image, light strikes a molecular lattice deposited on a metal substrate. The molecules can quickly exchange energy with the metal below, a mechanism that leads to a much faster response time for the emission of fluorescent light from the lattice.
Courtesy of the researchersResearch, School of Engineering, Mechanical engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Energy, Nanoscience and nanotechnologyShell executive describes inevitable transition to carbon-free energyhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/shell-executive-describes-transition-carbon-free-energy-0907
Harry Brekelmans says Shell has significant commitment to renewable energy, carbon pricing.Thu, 07 Sep 2017 14:00:00 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/shell-executive-describes-transition-carbon-free-energy-0907<p>Harry Brekelmans, the projects and technology director for Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world’s leading oil and gas companies and a founding member of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), on Wednesday met with groups of MIT students and faculty members about their work before taking part in a public discussion about energy issues with MITEI co-founder and director Robert Armstrong.</p>
<p>In the discussion, titled, “If you had a billion dollars for energy-related R&amp;D, where would you spend it?,” Brekelmans addressed that lofty question and many others about the company’s, and the world’s, energy future.</p>
<p>“For some years already we’ve been aware of the energy transition,” Brekelmans said. It’s accelerating, he said, and it’s clear that “it’s time to act, even more so than before.” Already, Shell has made “significant investments in wind, in solar, in biofuels — not all of them successful,” demonstrating the need to be careful about how one invests that research money. Because of the complexity of the world’s energy systems and demands, he said, “we have concluded that this will be a multidecade transition.”</p>
<p>Shell has long expressed its acceptance of the science of human-induced climate change and its determination to invest heavily in technologies to help enable a global transition to a world of drastically reduced greenhouse-gas emissions. As part of that commitment, Shell continues to fund a variety of research projects at MIT and elsewhere related to renewable energy, energy storage, and ways of capturing and storing carbon emissions from fossil fuel.</p>
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<p>In introducing the discussion Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research, pointed out that Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden recently said that with the right mix of policy and innovation, he sees global demand for oil peaking in the early 2030s or sooner — and that his next car will be electric.</p>
<p>Zuber said that MIT’s <em>Plan for Action on Climate Change </em>calls for finding solutions for decarbonizing the world’s energy systems, aiming for a zero-carbon energy system by the century’s end. To achieve that, she said, MIT’s view is that “the best chance of success is if a broad range of stakeholders, from industry to government to civil society, engage with each other proactively to address it.” One way of doing that, she said, is through conversations such as this one.</p>
<p>Brekelmans said that Shell’s approach to energy R&amp;D is two-pronged, working in parallel on both near-term and long-term strategies. For the near term, the emphasis is on finding technologies that already exist in other industries that can be adapted and scaled up to have a rapid impact on energy use. The longer-term work deals with new findings in laboratories, that have great potential but that may require many years of work to determine if they can be scaled up to meet a significant portion of the world’s energy needs or to improve the performance of existing energy systems.</p>
<p>While the company’s investments in low-carbon energy technologies goes back many years, the mix of research projects they support has evolved over time, he said. One change is that much more of the long-term research is now focused on energy storage systems. These are seen as a key enabling technology to allow for increased usage of energy sources that are inherently variable, such as wind and solar power. “It was not part of our portfolio 10 years ago,” he said, but is now a significant piece of it.</p>
<p>Another research area of increasing emphasis is capturing and storing carbon emissions from power plants to reduce their climate impact, he said. But other approaches don’t necessarily have to be high-tech, he said. “When we talk about offsets, we increasingly talk about simple things like reforestation,” he told students during his morning meetings.</p>
<p>Another change, he said, is “in the way we do R&amp;D. Our collaboration with MIT is absolutely fundamental” to Shell’s efforts. “We know we can’t do it ourselves alone. Much of the progress is happening here and at other institutions.” With the company’s own technology campus in Kendall Square, bordering the MIT campus, “we are hiring people who have no prior experience in oil and gas but who have a knack for innovation,” he said. Shell’s investments, he said, include providing “seed investments in crazy ideas, to help bring them to the next stage.”</p>
<p>Despite the company’s ongoing commitment to working toward a transition away from greenhouse emissions, Brekelmans said that he and his colleagues “all conclude every year that we’re not moving fast enough,” and continue to redouble their efforts.</p>
<p>Emphasizing that their reach and their interests are global, he added that Shell has also recently opened a campus in Bangalore, India, that employs almost 1,000 technologists, as an incubator for new technologies and approaches. The world’s energy systems and needs are very different and highly localized, he said: “Almost every country is different,” in terms of its needs and the most effective ways of meeting them.</p>
<p>In the developing world, he said, the company provides aid through the Shell Foundation, helping to bring electricity and other energy supplies to some of the world’s 3 billion people who lack access to reliable power. Among other things, these grants are aimed at helping some developing nations steer toward the use of natural gas rather than coal, as a lower-carbon fuel.</p>
<p>Shell “wants to be a voice and a leader” in the world’s energy transition, he said. But along the way, he said, the company must “not abandon the economic process that made us a leader,” namely the production and distribution of oil and gas.</p>
<p>The company clearly recognizes the need for some kind of pricing on carbon fuels that reflects their real impact on the world, Brekelmans said. Already, the company “internally works with a price on carbon,” assuming that this will eventually be part of the economic reality.</p>
<p>As for what form that pricing should take, whether it’s a carbon tax, a fee-and-dividend, or a cap-and-trade system, he said, “we are relatively agnostic, as long as we have a price that we can then develop and evolve.” Having some such system in place, he says, is “preferable to the almost religious debate over what is the best system.”</p>
Harry Brekelmans, right, the projects and technology director for Royal Dutch Shell, speaks with MITEI co-founder and director Robert Armstrong.
Photo: Kelley TraversAlternative energy, Climate change, Emissions, Energy, Energy storage, Environment, Global Warming, Greenhouse gases, Oil and gas, Renewable energyFirebricks offer low-cost storage for carbon-free energyhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/firebricks-low-cost-storage-carbon-free-energy-0906
Ancient technology could be used to level electricity prices for renewables.Wed, 06 Sep 2017 00:00:01 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/firebricks-low-cost-storage-carbon-free-energy-0906<p>Firebricks, designed to withstand high heat, have been part of our technological arsenal for at least three millennia, since the era of the Hittites. Now, a proposal from MIT researchers shows this ancient invention could play a key role in enabling the world to switch away from fossil fuels and rely instead on carbon-free energy sources.</p>
<p>The researchers’ idea is to make use of excess electricity produced when demand is low — for example, from wind farms when strong winds are blowing at night — by using electric resistance heaters, which convert electricity into heat. These devices would use the excess electricity to heat up a large mass of firebricks, which can retain the heat for long periods if they are enclosed in an insulated casing. At a later time, the heat could be used directly for industrial processes, or it could feed generators that convert it back to electricity when the power is needed.</p>
<p>The technology itself is old, but its potential usefulness is a new phenomenon, brought about by the rapid rise of intermittent renewable energy sources, and the peculiarities of the way electricity prices are set. Technologically, the system “could have been developed in the 1920s, but there was no market for it then,” says Charles Forsberg, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and lead author of a research paper describing the plan, that appears this week in the <em>Electricity Journal</em>.</p>
<p>Forsberg points out that the demand for industrial heat in the U.S. and most industrialized regions is actually larger than the total demand for electricity. And unlike the demand for electricity, which varies greatly and often unpredictably, the demand for industrial heat is constant and can make use of an extra heat source whenever it’s available, providing an almost limitless market for the heat provided by this firebrick-based system.</p>
<p>The system, which Forsberg calls FIRES (for FIrebrick Resistance-heated Energy Storage), would in effect raise the minimum price of electricity on the utilities market, which currently can plunge to almost zero at times of high production, such as the middle of a sunny day when solar plant outputs are at their peak.</p>
<p>Electricity prices are determined a day in advance, with a separate price for each one-hour segment of the day. This is done through an auction system between the producers and the distributors of power. Distributors determine how much power they expect to need during each hour, and suppliers bid based on their expected costs for producing that power. Depending on the needs at a given time, these prices can be low, if only baseload natural gas plants are needed, for example, or they can be much higher if the demand requires use of much more expensive “peaking” power plants. At the end of each auction, the distributors figure out how many of the bids will be needed to meet the projected demand, and the price to be paid to all of the suppliers is then determined by the highest-priced bid of all those accepted for that hour.</p>
<p>But that system can lead to odd outcomes when power that is very cheap to produce — solar, wind and nuclear power, whose actual operating costs are vanishingly small — can supply enough to meet the demand. Then, the price the suppliers get for the power can be close to zero, rendering the plants uneconomical.</p>
<p>But by diverting much of that excess output into thermal storage by heating a large mass of firebrick, then selling that heat directly or using it to drive turbines and produce power later when it’s needed, FIRES could essentially set a lower limit on the market price for electricity, which would likely be about the price of natural gas. That, in turn, could help to make more carbon-free power sources, such as solar, wind, and nuclear, more profitable and thus encourage their expansion.</p>
<p>The collapse of electricity prices due to expansion of nonfossil energy is already happening and will continue to increase as renewable energy installations increase. “In electricity markets such as Iowa, California, and Germany, the price of electricity drops to near zero at times of high wind or solar output,” Forsberg says. Once the amount of generating capacity provided by solar power reaches about 15 percent of the total generating mix, or when wind power reaches 30 percent of the total, building such installations can become unprofitable unless there is a sufficient storage capacity to absorb the excess for later use.</p>
<p>At present, the options for storing excess electricity are essentially limited to batteries or pumped hydroelectric systems. By contrast, the low-tech firebrick thermal storage system would cost anywhere from one-tenth to one-fortieth as much as either of those options, Forsberg says.</p>
<p>Firebrick itself is just a variant of ordinary bricks, made from clays that are capable of withstanding much higher temperatures, ranging up to 1,600 degrees Celsius or more. Virtually dirt cheap to produce — clay is, after all, just a particular kind of dirt — such high-temperature bricks have been found in archeological sites dating back to around 3,500 years ago, such as in iron-smelting kilns built by the Hittites in what is now Turkey. The fact that these bricks have survived until now testifies to their durability.</p>
<p>Nowadays, by varying the chemical composition of the clay, firebrick can be made with a variety of properties. For example, bricks to be placed in the center of the assemblage could have high thermal conductivity, so that they can easily take in heat from the resistance heaters. These bricks could easily give up that heat to cold air being blown through the mass to carry away the heat for industrial use. But the bricks used for the outer parts of the structure could have very low thermal conductivity, thus creating an insulating shell to help retain the heat of the central stack.</p>
<p>The current limit on FIRES is the resistance heaters. Existing low-cost, reliable heaters only go to about 850 C. Ultimately, Forsberg suggests, the bricks themselves could be made electrically conductive, so that they could act as low-cost resistance heaters on their own, both producing and storing the heat. A promising material for these firebricks is silicon carbide, which is already produced at massive scales for uses such as sandpaper. China currently produces about a million tons of it per year, Forsberg says.</p>
<p>Turning that heat back into electricity is a bigger technical challenge, so that would likely be a next-generation version of the FIRES system, he says. That’s because producing electricity with the conventional turbines used for natural gas power plants requires a much higher temperature. While industrial process heat is viable at about 800 C, he says, the turbines need compressed air heated to at least 1,600 C. Ordinary resistance heaters can’t go that high, and such systems will also need an enclosing pressure vessel to handle the needed air pressure. But the advantage would be great: Doubling the operating temperature would cut in half the cost of the heat produced, Forsberg says.</p>
<p>The next step, Forsberg says, will be to set up some full-scale prototype units to prove the principles in real-world conditions, something he expects will happen by 2020. “We’re finding the right customers for those initial units,” he says, which would probably be a company such as an ethanol refinery, which uses a lot of heat, located near a sizable wind-turbine installation.</p>
<p>“I believe that FIRES is an innovative approach to solve a real power grid problem,” says Regis Matzie, the now-retired Chief Technical Officer at Westinghouse Electric, who was not involved in this work. The way prices for electricity are determined in this country produces a “skewed electricity market [that] produces low or even negative market prices when a significant fraction of electrical energy on the grid is provided by renewables,” he says. “A very positive way to correct this trend would be to deploy an economical way of storing the energy generated during low electricity market prices, e.g., when the renewables are generating a large amount of electricity, and then releasing this stored energy when the market prices are high… FIRES provides a potentially economic way to do this, but would probably need a demonstration to establish the operability and the economics.”</p>
<p>The research team included MIT graduate students Daniel Stack, Daniel Curtis, Geoffrey Haratyk, and recent graduate Nestor Sepulveda MS ’14.</p>
One proposed application of the firebrick-based thermal storage system is depicted in this hypothetical configuration, where it is coupled to a nuclear power plant to provide easily dispatchable power.
Courtesy of the researchersResearch, Nuclear science and engineering, School of Engineering, Alternative energy, Energy, Energy storage, Greenhouse gases, Climate change, Global Warming, SolarFikile Brushett and Florence Wagner named to Chemical and Engineering News “Talented 12”https://news.mit.edu/2017/fikile-brushett-florence-wagner-named-chemical-and-engineering-news-talented-12-0901
MIT affiliates recognized for their innovative approaches to energy storage and drug discovery.Fri, 01 Sep 2017 14:00:01 -0400Melanie Miller Kaufman | Department of Chemical Engineeringhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/fikile-brushett-florence-wagner-named-chemical-and-engineering-news-talented-12-0901<p>Professor Fikile Brushett of the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering and Florence Wagner, institute scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, have been selected as two of 2017's “Talented 12” by <em>Chemical and Engineering News (C&amp;EN),</em> the weekly magazine of the American Chemical Society. Brushett is recognized for his innovative approach to economical and sustainable energy storage and the magazine calls him the “<a href="http://talented12.cenmag.org/fikile-brushett/" target="_blank">Baron of Batteries</a>.” Wagner is the “<a href="http://talented12.cenmag.org/florence-wagner/" target="_blank">Drug Discovery Dynamo</a>,” as her work in targeted psychiatric therapies has shown potential to upend the field of psychiatric drug discovery.</p>
<p>Brushett, the Raymond A. (1921) and Helen E. St. Laurent Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering, is developing new ways of storing energy from sustainable sources such as wind and sunlight. He is particularly interested in understanding and controlling the fundamental processes that define the performance, cost, and lifetime of present day and next-generation electrochemical systems. His laboratory is presently pursuing research on redox flow batteries for grid storage and on electrochemical upgrading of low-value feedstocks. <a href="http://talented12.cenmag.org/fikile-brushett/" target="_blank">As described by </a><em><a href="http://talented12.cenmag.org/fikile-brushett/" target="_blank">C&amp;EN</a>,</em> “a major focus of his lab is understanding how chemical structure affects the function of redox active molecules, with the goal of expanding the toolbox for engineering batteries. In addition, his lab is developing new electrochemical reactors to improve battery performance.”</p>
<p>Wagner, director of the medicinal chemistry group in the Broad’s Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, focuses on designing and implementing strategies that will enable development of novel therapeutic strategies for central nervous system-related psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, and neurodevelopmental disorders. These strategies include the rational design and development of novel, potent, and highly selective small molecules suitable for clinical development and the development of translatable biomarkers. <a href="http://talented12.cenmag.org/florence-wagner/" target="_blank"><em>C&amp;EN</em> explains</a>, “Recently, Wagner and her colleagues developed molecules that can selectively inhibit each of the two forms of an enzyme called glycogen synthase kinase 3 (GSK3), a possible target of the bipolar disorder treatment lithium. Previous inhibitors out of industry hit both forms of GSK3 and caused serious side effects in human studies. Wagner and her colleagues showed that selectively inhibiting either of the two forms avoided that toxicity in cells.”</p>
<p>To find its annual Talented 12, <em>C&amp;EN</em> called on a panel of industry advisers, <em>C&amp;EN’s </em>advisory board, and Talented 12 alumni to nominate prospects aged 42 or younger who are pushing the boundaries in their fields. They also accepted nominations from readers through an online form. Finally, they researched and evaluated the more than 150 candidates amassed during this process to zero in on the 12 most "path-paving" individuals.</p>
Images courtesy of Chemical and Engineering News.Awards, honors and fellowships, Faculty, Staff, Chemical engineering, Chemistry, Energy, Broad Institute, School of Engineering, Psychiatric disorders, Drug development, BatteriesMeasuring depths, scaling heightshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-grad-student-leigh-ann-kesler-climbing-measuring-fusion-reactors-0831
When not climbing mountains, nuclear science and engineering PhD candidate Leigh Ann Kesler tracks erosion inside fusion reactor containment chambers.Thu, 31 Aug 2017 17:10:01 -0400Paul Rivenberg | Plasma Science and Fusion Centerhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-grad-student-leigh-ann-kesler-climbing-measuring-fusion-reactors-0831<p>Graduate student Leigh Ann Kesler is pursuing her two great interests: fusion science and rock climbing. One day she finds herself scrambling up bare rock faces to view grand vistas of mountains and valleys carved by glaciers,&nbsp;the next she is in the laboratory, exploring minute changes in the depth of materials being eroded by fusion forces.</p>
<p>Kesler studies at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), and&nbsp;dates her interest in fusion back to an&nbsp;11th-grade persuasive writing assignment. Inspired in part by her father’s interest in the potential of nuclear energy, she decided to investigate fusion. Searching for the topic at&nbsp;the library in her Fisher, Illinois, high school, she found just one 1970s-vintage book on the topic, but its description of a magnetic fusion device called a tokamak was compelling enough to hook her for good.</p>
<p>As an undergrad at the University of Illinois, Kesler studied nuclear, plasma, and radiological engineering, learning the basics about how plasmas affect materials from one of her mentors, Professor&nbsp;David Ruzic. Working in his laboratory on projects related to semiconductor manufacturing as well as fusion, she gained a reputation for expertise with plasma diagnostics. Graduate students several years her senior soon began to seek her help with their projects.</p>
<p>“I don’t know if I was an expert,” she says, laughing. “But I had several advantages.&nbsp;I had small hands. I could reach inside of the bottom of the chamber [of the experiment].&nbsp;I’d been there long enough that they knew I wasn’t going to break things.”</p>
<p><strong>Understanding fusion devices</strong></p>
<p>Now at MIT, she is continuing her research in materials science and fusion research under the guidance of Professor Dennis Whyte, head of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department and director of the PSFC, and Assistant Professor&nbsp;Zach Hartwig. As she did&nbsp;in Illinois, she works in a lab that utilizes small-scale plasma devices for ex situ observation of plasma surface interactions. &nbsp;</p>
<p>Her main focus is erosion of materials inside fusion devices, where strong magnetic fields keep the hot plasma fuel confined and away from the walls of the vacuum chamber where fusion reactions occur. But the plasma can still affect the walls, resulting in surface erosion and other changes.</p>
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<p>“It’s very difficult to determine exactly how a particular kind of plasma discharge affects the interior material of the machine,” Kesler says. "We can’t be sure of the amount of erosion occurring at any particular moment. Erosion affects not only the wall materials, but also the plasma itself, which can become contaminated by the eroded materials. If you are eroding or even melting the surfaces you will eventually destroy the divertor, which is designed to remove impurities from the plasma.”</p>
<p>She works mainly on a 2 megavolt&nbsp;electrostatic accelerator called DANTE in the Vault Laboratory for Nuclear Science, which is part of the Center for Science and Technology with Accelerators and Radiation (CSTAR). The lab is&nbsp;a shielded, underground facility that allows her to work safely with a deuterium ion beam. She also uses CSTAR's&nbsp;Cambridge Laboratory for Accelerator Surface Science, giving&nbsp;her the versatility of working with&nbsp;two ion sources.</p>
<p>Kesler is searching for a way to measure, on a shot-by-shot basis, what changes are happening on the interior surface of the tokamak in order&nbsp;to gain a better understanding of how different plasma conditions affect surfaces. To this end, she will use the accelerator to create “depth markers” to help measure changes in the metallic surfaces. She is working with tungsten, a metal that will likely be used for the divertors of future tokamaks.</p>
<p>“Accelerators can be used to implant stuff into the surface of a material," she says. A layer of a material, like boron, put close to the surface can be used as a reference point.</p>
<p>"If the location of this layer changes after interacting with the plasma that means the amount of tungsten on the surface has changed," she says. "Either something has been added or something has been taken away.”</p>
<p>Kesler is still fine-tuning what that reference point will be, the best&nbsp;material to use, how to create the depth marker, and how to use the accelerators to see how the plasma has affected the surface. Her technique should be applicable to any material&nbsp;and will be relevant to tokamaks around the world, allowing researchers to diagnose the effect of each plasma shot as it happens.</p>
<p><strong>“Addicted to hiking”</strong></p>
<p>While the lab keeps her busy, Kesler has been able to indulge her love of hiking and rock climbing, not only in the mountains of New England, but in places as far away as Machu Picchu, the Faroe Islands, and Mount Vesuvius. She started rock climbing during a summer internship in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where after work she would explore the area crags with friends.</p>
<p>“It turned into the best summer of my life, and I was addicted to hiking and climbing after that.”</p>
<p>At MIT she got involved with more aspects of the sport when she started going on trips with the MIT Outing Club (MITOC). Soon she was a hiking and climbing leader, and is currently on the board of directors.</p>
<p>“MITOC has been an amazing part of my grad school experience, allowing me to make friends with shared interests and to let me escape the confines of the city on the weekends. As a country girl, I get sick of the city, so New Hampshire has been my second home while I'm here.”</p>
<p>On a mountain she can study the surface of a rock that will provide her next foothold instead of the interior surface of a tokamak. She can breathe the thin air of high altitudes before returning to her underground laboratory. She was excited about her recent hike with five friends from MITOC to Gannett Peak, Wyoming’s highest point, where she was able to watch the total eclipse on Aug. 21.</p>
<p>“We hiked for two days to high camp, took one day to summit, then one day to retreat. I had bruised my heel six weeks earlier in a climbing accident, so I was out of shape, but the trip was still amazing. Viewing the totality of the eclipse was mind-blowing. The 360-degree sunset/sunrise and the reality of the sun disappearing from view was something I cannot describe. It is an experience of a lifetime.”</p>
<p>Now at the beginning of her sixth year, Kesler is still researching and writing, but starting to consider her options after graduation. “An international postdoctoral position in materials development would be great. But I’m not so much interested in where I go as in doing interesting work,” she says.</p>
<p>Ideally that work will be situated not far from a mountain, she says.&nbsp;“There are always more rocks to climb.”</p>
Graduate student Leigh Ann Kesler researches the effects of hot plasma on the interiors of fusion devices using a 2 megavolt electrostatic accelerator called DANTE in the Vault Laboratory for Nuclear Science at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center.Photo: Paul Rivenberg/PSFCSchool of Engineering, Alternative energy, Energy, Fusion, Nuclear power and reactors, Nuclear science and engineering, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Renewable energy, Research, Graduate, postdoctoral, Clubs and activities, Student lifeFusion heating gets a boosthttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-plasma-research-collaboration-gives-fusion-heating-boost-0821
The Plasma Science and Fusion Center explores a new recipe for heating plasma.Mon, 21 Aug 2017 17:00:01 -0400Paul Rivenberg | Plasma Science and Fusion Centerhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-plasma-research-collaboration-gives-fusion-heating-boost-0821<p>In the quest for fusion energy, scientists have spent decades experimenting with ways to make plasma fuel hot and dense enough to generate significant fusion power. At MIT, researchers have focused their attention on using radio-frequency (RF) heating in magnetic confinement fusion experiments like the Alcator C-Mod tokamak, which completed its final run in September 2016.</p>
<p>Now, using data from C-Mod experiments, fusion researchers at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), along with colleagues in Belgium and the UK, have created a new method of heating fusion plasmas in tokamaks. The new method has resulted&nbsp;in raising trace amounts of ions to megaelectronvolt (MeV) energies —&nbsp;an order of magnitude greater than previously achieved.</p>
<p>“These higher energy ranges are in the same range as activated fusion products,” PSFC research scientist John C. Wright explains. “To be able to create such energetic ions in a non-activated device —&nbsp;not doing a huge amount of fusion —&nbsp;is beneficial, because we can study how ions with energies comparable to fusion reaction products behave, how well they would be confined.”</p>
<p>The new approach, <a href="http://rdcu.be/tyA6" target="_blank">recently detailed</a> in the journal <em>Nature Physics</em>, uses a fuel composed of three ion species: hydrogen, deuterium, and trace amounts (less than 1 percent) of helium-3. Typically,&nbsp;plasma used for fusion research in the laboratory would be composed of two ion species, deuterium and hydrogen or deuterium and He-3, with deuterium dominating the mixture&nbsp;by up to 95 percent. Researchers focus energy on the minority species, which heats up to much higher energies owing to its smaller fraction of the total density. In the new three-species scheme, all the RF energy is absorbed by just a trace amount of He-3 and the&nbsp;ion energy is boosted even more —&nbsp;to the range of activated fusion products.</p>
<p>Wright was inspired to pursue this research after attending a lecture in 2015 on this scenario by Yevgen Kazakov, a researcher at the <a href="http://fusion.rma.ac.be/">Laboratory for Plasma Physics</a>&nbsp;in Brussels, Belgium, and the lead author of the <em>Nature Physics</em> article. Wright suggested that MIT test these ideas using Alcator C-Mod, with Kazakov and his colleague Jef&nbsp;Ongena collaborating from Brussels.</p>
<p>At MIT, PSFC research scientist Stephen Wukitch helped developed the scenario and run the experiment, while Professor&nbsp;Miklos Porkolab contributed his expertise on RF heating. Research scientist Yijun Lin was able to measure the complex wave structure in the plasma with the PSFC’s unique phase contrast imaging (PCI) diagnostic, which was developed over the last two decades by Porkolab and his graduate students. Research scientist Ted Golfinopoulos supported the experiment by tracking the effect of MeV-range ions on measurements of plasma fluctuations.</p>
<p>The successful results on C-Mod provided proof of principle, enough to get scientists at the UK’s <a href="https://www.euro-fusion.org/jet/">Joint European Torus (JET)</a>, Europe’s largest fusion device, interested in reproducing the results. Like JET, C-Mod operated at magnetic field strength and plasma pressure comparable to what would be needed in a future fusion-capable device. The two tokamaks also had complementary diagnostic capabilities, making it possible for C-Mod&nbsp;to measure the waves involved in the complex wave-particle interaction, while JET was able to directly measure&nbsp;the MeV-range particles.</p>
<p>John Wright praises the collaboration.</p>
<p>“The JET folks had really good energetic particle diagnostics, so they could directly measure these high energy ions and verify that they were indeed there,”&nbsp;he says. “The fact that we had a basic theory realized on two different devices on two continents came together to produce a strong paper.”</p>
<p>Porkolab suggests that the new approach could be helpful for MIT’s collaboration with the <a href="http://www.ipp.mpg.de/w7x">Wendelstein 7-X stellarator</a> at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany, where research is ongoing on one of the fundamental physics questions: How well fusion-relevant energetic ions are confined. The <em>Nature Physics</em> article also notes that the experiments could provide insight into the abundant flux of He-3 ions observed in solar flares.</p>
The interior of the Alcator C-Mod tokamak, where experiments were conducted that have helped create a new scenario for heating plasma and achieving fusion.Photo: Bob Mumgaard/Plasma Science and Fusion CenterAlternative energy, Energy, Collaboration, Nuclear power and reactors, Nuclear science and engineering, Fusion, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Research, School of Engineering, Europe, PhysicsStudy: For food-waste recycling, policy is keyhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/study-food-waste-recycling-policy-key-0817
Successful programs aren’t limited to well-off towns with strong environmental movements.Thu, 17 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400Peter Dizikes | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/study-food-waste-recycling-policy-key-0817<p>Food scraps. Okay, those aren’t the first words that come to mind when you think about the environment. But 22 percent of the municipal solid waste dropped into landfills or incincerators in the U.S. is, in fact, food that could be put to better use through composting and soil enrichment.</p>
<p>Moreover, food-scrap recycling programs, while still relatively uncommon, are having a growth moment in the U.S.; they’ve roughly doubled in size since 2010. Now, a national study by MIT researchers provides one of the first in-depth looks at the characteristics of places that have adopted food recycling, revealing several new facts in the process.</p>
<p>For instance: The places deploying food-scrap recycling programs are located throughout the country, not just in well-off coastal areas with popular environmental movements.</p>
<p>“You don’t have to be Seattle to have really good waste management,” says Lily Baum Pollans PhD ’17, a recent doctoral graduate of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning and corresponding author of the new paper outlining the study’s results.</p>
<p>Significantly, cities with food-scrap recycling often have “pay as you throw” garbage collection policies (PAYT), which typically charge residents for exceeding a certain volume of trash. These programs make people more active participants in waste collection by having them limit and sort garbage. Thus, adopting PAYT paves the way for food-scrap recycling.</p>
<p>“Having a ‘pay as you throw’ policy seems to make everything else easier,” says Jonathan S. Krones PhD ’16, a visiting scholar in the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering and a graduate of MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.</p>
<p>The paper, “Patterns in municipal food scrap programming in mid-sized U.S. cities,” has been published online in the journal Resources, Conservation, and Recycling, where it will also appear in print. The research brings together multiple disciplines; the authors are Pollans, Krones, and Professor Eran Ben-Joseph, who is head of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.</p>
<p><strong>Food for thought</strong></p>
<p>Food-scrap recycling has multiple benefits. Food scraps can be used for composting, which enriches soil and reduces emissions of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from landfills. It also significantly reduces the volume of landfill needed in a given area. And recycling food can save cities and towns money by lowering the needed frequency of trash collection.</p>
<p>“If you remove food from your waste stream, you no longer have to remove garbage so often,” Krones says.</p>
<p>About one-third of all trash in the U.S. is recycled, a level that has held steady in the U.S. in recent years. But since 2010, the food-scrap recycling rate has increased from 2.7 percent to 5.1 percent, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Still, there is clearly room for greater adoption of the practice.</p>
<p>“The food system is notoriously wasteful at all levels,” the authors write in the paper.</p>
<p>To understand that system better, the researchers in 2015 conducted a survey of 115 mid-sized U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000 but less than 1 million. Places of that size almost always direct their own waste and recycling policies (which in some smaller municipalities are handled at the county level).</p>
<p>In all, 46 of the 115 cities have active food-scrap recycling programs of various forms, including educational programs, low-cost home composting bins, drop-off facilities, and curbside collection of food. By studying those cities, the researchers identified key characteristics of places that have adopted food recycling — which can then inform other cities and towns about the viability of the practice.</p>
<p>For instance, food-scrap recycling occurs in areas not strongly associated with recycling programs in general: Over 35 percent of the cities surveyed spanning a large portion of the South have some form of food-scrap diversion program (including education and outreach efforts), along with six out of 10 cities in a large portion of the Midwest.</p>
<p>“This doesn’t have to be a specialty boutique program,” says Pollans, who is now an assistant professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College.</p>
<p>Indeed, the researchers discovered that multiple economic and social factors, including income levels, seem to have negligible correlation with a place’s tendency to adopt food-scrap recycling. It is not as if wealthier, prosperous enclaves of people recycle food as a feel-good initiative.</p>
<p>“Really, these socioeconomic characteristics aren’t relevant,” Krones says.</p>
<p>Instead, a notable factor that predicts adoption of food-scrap recycling, other things being equal, is the existence of PAYT trash collection. This strongly suggests that such programs get residents in the habit of actively managing their trash disposal in response to financial incentives — and, as such, makes it seem less burdensome to separate food from other kinds of trash.</p>
<p>“This finding should make economists happy,” Krones quips.</p>
<p>And as the researchers write in the paper, this suggests that “investing first in PAYT would mean that future diversion [meaning recycling] programs are more likely to be successful,” because they will be part of a “holistic policy vision” for trash.</p>
<p><strong>Another form of infrastructure</strong></p>
<p>As the researchers readily acknowledge, the long-term success of these food-scrap recycling programs — and not just their adoption — is an important consideration in need of further study. To that end, they are currently working on studies that look in more detail at the local political factors that lead to the adoption of food-scrap recycling, and at the bottom-line effectiveness of the programs themselves.</p>
<p>Still, as Ben-Joseph notes, it is important to give waste disposal the same empirical attention that other, higher-profile elements of trash, recycling, and infrastructure receive.</p>
<p>“Most people don’t think of solid waste as part of our infrastructure systems,” Ben-Joseph says. “There is an interest in water, sewer, electricity … but solid waste is a diffused structure which is hard to decipher. With this study we tried to understand and map what is taking place in over 100 cities across the country.”</p>
<p>Moreover, Pollans contends, “It is important to ask what the capacity of cities is in creating environmental transformations, given the lack of policy initiatives at higher levels of government.”</p>
<p>Funding for the research was provided by the Environmental Solutions Initiative at MIT, a multidisciplinary program that advances research and education on issues of the environment and sustainability.</p>
<p>The research project was initiated under the direction of the late professor Judith Layzer of MIT, whose influential work often examined the dynamics of environmental politics.</p>
A national study by MIT researchers provides one of the first in-depth looks at the characteristics of places that have adopted food recycling, revealing several new facts in the process. School of Architecture and Planning, Climate change, Environment, Energy, Greenhouse gases, Engineering Systems, Infrastructure, Renewable energy, Urban studies and planning, DMSE, IDSSResearchers clarify mystery about proposed battery materialhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/researchers-clarify-mystery-about-proposed-battery-material-0815
Study explains conflicting results from other experiments, may lead to batteries with more energy per pound.Tue, 15 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/researchers-clarify-mystery-about-proposed-battery-material-0815<p>Battery researchers agree that one of the most promising possibilities for future battery technology is the lithium-air (or lithium-oxygen) battery, which could provide three times as much power for a given weight as today’s leading technology, lithium-ion batteries. But tests of various approaches to creating such batteries have produced conflicting and confusing results, as well as controversies over how to explain them.</p>
<p>Now, a team at MIT has carried out detailed tests that seem to resolve the questions surrounding one promising material for such batteries: a compound called lithium iodide (LiI). The compound was seen as a possible solution to some of the lithium-air battery’s problems, including an inability to sustain many charging-discharging cycles, but conflicting findings had raised questions about the material’s usefulness for this task. The new study explains these discrepancies, and although it suggests that the material might not be suitable after all, the work provides guidance for efforts to overcome LiI’s drawbacks or find alternative materials.</p>
<p>The new results appear in the journal <em>Energy and Environmental Science</em>, in a paper by Yang Shao-Horn, MIT’s W.M. Keck Professor of Energy; Paula Hammond, the David H. Koch Professor in Engineering and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering; Michal Tulodziecki, a recent MIT postdoc at the Research Laboratory of Electronics; Graham Leverick, an MIT graduate student; Yu Katayama, a visiting student; and three others.</p>
<p>The promise of the lithium-air battery comes from the fact one of the two electrodes, which are usually made of metal or metal oxides, is replaced with air that flows in and out of the battery; a weightless substance is thus substituted for one of the heavy components. The other electrode in such batteries would be pure metallic lithium, a lightweight element.</p>
<p>But that theoretical promise has been limited in practice because of three issues: the need for high voltages for charging, a low efficiency with regard to getting back the amount of energy put in, and low cycle lifetimes, which result from instability in the battery’s oxygen electrode. Researchers have proposed adding lithium iodide in the electrolyte as a way of addressing these problems. But published results have been contradictory, with some studies finding the LiI does improve the cycling life, “while others show that the presence of LiI leads to irreversible reactions and poor battery cycling,” Shao-Horn says.</p>
<p>Previously, “most of the research was focused on organics” to make lithium-air batteries feasible, says Michal Tulodziecki, the paper’s lead author. But most of these organic compounds are not stable, he says, “and that’s why there’s been a great focus on lithium iodide [an inorganic material], which some papers said helps the batteries achieve thousands of cycles. But others say no, it will damage the battery.” In this new study, he says, “we explored in detail how lithium iodide affects the process, with and without water,” a comparison which turned out to be significant.</p>
<p>The team looked at the role of LiI on lithium-air battery discharge, using a different approach from most other studies. One set of studies was conducted with the components outside of the battery, which allowed the researchers to zero in on one part of the reaction, while the other study was done in the battery, to help explain the overall process.</p>
<p>They then used ultraviolet and visible-light spectroscopy and other techniques to study the reactions that took place. Both of these processes foster the production of different lithium compound such as LiOH (lithium hydroxide) in the presence of both LiI and water, instead of Li2O<sub>2 </sub>(lithium peroxide). &nbsp;LiI can enhance water’s reactivity and make it lose protons more easily, which promotes the formation of LiOH in these batteries and interferes with the charging process. These observations show that finding ways to suppress these reactions could make compounds such as LiI work better.</p>
<p>This study could point the way toward selecting a different compound instead of LiI to perform its intended function of suppressing unwanted chemical reactions at the electrode surface, Leverick says, adding that this work demonstrates the importance of “looking at the detailed mechanism carefully.”</p>
<p>Shao-Horn says that the new findings “help get to the bottom of this existing controversy on the role of LiI on discharge. We believe this clarifies and brings together all these different points of view.”</p>
<p>But this work is just one step in a long process of trying to make lithium-air technology practical, the researchers say. “There’s so much to understand,” says Leverick, “so there’s not one paper that’s going to solve it. But we will make consistent progress.”</p>
<p>“Lithium-oxygen batteries that run on oxygen and lithium ions are of great interest because they could enable electric vehicles of much greater range. However, one of the problems is that they are not very efficient yet," says Larry Curtiss, a distinguished fellow at Argonne National Laboratory, who was not involved in this work. In this study, he says, "it is shown how adding a simple salt, lithium iodide, can potentially be used to make these batteries run much more efficiently. They have provided new insight into how the lithium iodide acts to help break up the solid discharge product, which will help to enable the development of these advanced battery systems.”</p>
<p>Curtiss adds that “there are still significant barriers remaining to be overcome before these batteries become a reality, such as getting long enough cycle life, but this is an important contribution to the field.”</p>
<p>The team also included recent MIT graduates Chibueze Amanchukwu PhD ’17 and David Kwabi PhD ’16, and Fanny Bardé of Toyota Motor Europe. The work was supported by Toyota Motor Europe and the Skoltech Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage, and used facilities supported by the National Science Foundation.</p>
This series of photographs shows the chemical reaction that occurs during the charging of a lithium oxygen battery using lithium iodide as an additive.
Photo: Jose-Luis Olivares/MITResearch, School of Engineering, Batteries, Chemical engineering, Mechanical engineering, MIT Energy Initiative, Materials Science and Engineering, DMSE, Energy, Energy storage, Chemistry, National Science Foundation (NSF)Using energy-based designs to enhance earthquake hazard resistancehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/using-energy-based-designs-to-enhance-earthquake-hazard-resistance-0810
International workshop funded by new MISTI Global Seed Fund showcases the potential of energy-based structural analysis and sensing.Thu, 10 Aug 2017 13:20:01 -0400Carolyn Schmitt | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineeringhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/using-energy-based-designs-to-enhance-earthquake-hazard-resistance-0810<p>By taking an innovative approach to designing recommendations for new buildings and structures, researchers at MIT are collaborating with researchers and engineers around the world to develop cost-effective, non-invasive tools and methods for observing and measuring a structure’s movement and energy, a paradigm referred to as “energy-based design” (EBD).</p>
<p>This summer, Professor Oral Buyukozturk of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) traveled to Istanbul, Turkey, to direct a workshop on EBD, an emerging structural design and analysis concept.</p>
<p>The energy-based design concept considers earthquake effect as an energy input and looks at how this energy is distributed within the structure. If the structure is damaged, some of this energy would be dissipated. Buyukozturk, his research group, and collaborators from Boğaziçi University and Istanbul Technical University (ITU), are working together to develop tools and methods for observing and measuring a structure’s motion and energy components, in order to have a comprehensive understanding of how the structure would respond to an earthquake. The collaboration is funded by the MIT-Turkey - Boğaziçi University Seed Fund from MIT’s International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI), a recent addition to the <a href="http://misti.mit.edu/faculty-funds" target="_blank">MISTI Global Seed Funds</a>.</p>
<p>“A design paradigm for earthquake resistance based on this concept is more consistent with the physics of the system and provides more realistic assessment taking into account the duration of the earthquake as opposed to the current design methods that are based on displacements,” Buyukozturk says. “The purpose of the workshop is to advance this concept and verify its potential, through experimentation and analysis also making use of new sensing techniques developed at MIT, for better design of earthquake resilient structures.”</p>
<p>The workshop, called “Energy Based Structural Analysis and Sensing,” provided an open forum for researchers to share their various research and engineering experiences that can be integrated into the EBD paradigm, including sustainable construction materials, structural sensing, and damage detection.</p>
<p>This international research effort between the universities aims to provide a strong basis for new design recommendations and practical codes in enhancing earthquake hazard resistance of modern structures. The meeting, well-versed with participants from local universities and structural design and construction companies, offered ample opportunities for attendees to discuss the emerging paradigm and its potential for earthquake engineering.</p>
<p>“At MIT CEE, our research aims to solve the world’s greatest challenges in the areas of infrastructure and environment, and we collaborate broadly to understand complex issues and offer solutions,” says Markus Buehler, head of CEE and the McAfee Professor of Engineering. “By establishing international collaborations such those formed through Professor Buyukozturk’s Energy Based Structural Analysis and Sensing workshop, we are able to increase the impact of our novel research and developments.”</p>
<p><strong>Strength in numbers: Forming international collaborations </strong></p>
<p>At the workshop, members of Buyukozturk’s group, including postdocs Hao Sun and Justin Chen and graduate students Steven Palkovic, James Long, and Murat Uzun, presented comprehensive findings of their research, including advanced sensing technologies and data processing algorithms. The MIT research team also presented their recent developments on their video-based structural sensing and motion magnification. While in Turkey, the group used this technique to measure the vibration modes of the suspension bridge crossing the Istanbul Bosphorus and connecting Europe to Asia.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“It was a great opportunity to attend the workshop, exchanging ideas with our collaborators in Turkey. This workshop broadens the spectrum for further development of energy based design and analysis approaches through incorporating innovative sensing and data analytics techniques,” says Sun from Buyukozturk’s group. “The Boğaziçi campus venue is one of the most beautiful places in the world overseeing the Istanbul Bosphorus, and the food was incredible.”</p>
<p>Researchers from Boğaziçi and ITU also introduced their ongoing research findings from research on EBD. As a result of the information-sharing, Buyukozturk’s group and researchers from Boğaziçi and ITU were able to identify numerous areas potential for partnering on various related projects with several PhD topics.</p>
<p>“Visiting the two universities in Istanbul really facilitated the exchange of research ideas as well as the unique opportunity to conduct experiments in a world class earthquake structural testing facility,” says Chen.</p>
<p>In addition to research presentations, the workshop included experimental work on a powerful shake table, which simulated actual earthquake motions in shaking selected laboratory structures. In this process, the data acquisition systems used include the novel techniques developed by the MIT team, such as computer vision-based structural sensing. The event concluded with a final session allowing researchers and participants to discuss emerging research and development opportunities and future EBD tools and methods.</p>
<p>“This is a partnership of top institutions with enthusiastic and bright students promising game-changing innovations in the future,” Buyukozturk says.</p>
<p>The data collected during the workshop will be processed by the researchers from MIT, Boğaziçi, and ITU. This continued international collaboration is currently focused on analyzing initial findings, furthering the development of EBD and the eventual publication of their results and recommendations.</p>
<p>“MISTI looks forward to consolidating the MIT-Boğaziçi University collaboration through the next seed fund call, and&nbsp;to expanding the range of student and faculty opportunities it offers in Turkey,” says Serenella Sferza, co-director of the MIT-Italy Program and MIT-Turkey Pilot Program Lead.</p>
<p>The Energy Based Structural Analysis and Sensing event was held as part of a continued workshop series between MIT, Boğaziçi, and ITU. The next workshop is planned to be held at MIT, and Buyukozturk’s group will host collaborators from the Turkish partner universities. The workshop was organized in collaboration with Associate Professor Cem Yalcin of Boğaziçi and Associate Professor Ercan Yuksel of ITU and was made possible by the support and funding from MISTI and Limak Holding of Turkey.</p>
Members of the Buyukozturk group pose on the skydeck of the Engineering Building of Bogazici University, in Istanbul. Left to right: Murat Uzun, Justin Chen, MIT Professor Oral Buyukozturk, Hao Sun, and Steven Palkovic. The group traveled to Turkey to present their research as part of a collaborative workshop. International initiatives, MISTI, Civil and environmental engineering, Europe, Energy, Earthquakes, School of Engineering, SHASS, ResearchPutting the freeze on lab energy wastehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/putting-the-freeze-on-lab-energy-waste-0809
MIT Green Labs’ first-ever Freezer Challenge encourages energy conservation through better freezer and sample storage practices.Wed, 09 Aug 2017 16:00:01 -0400Frankie Schembri | Environment, Health and Safety Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/putting-the-freeze-on-lab-energy-waste-0809<p>This spring, nine MIT laboratories participated in the Institute’s first-ever Freezer Challenge, a friendly competition to encourage sustainable sample storage and freezer management practices. The labs’ combined efforts saved an estimated 86,892 metric tons equivalent of greenhouse gases, and $16,769 in energy costs.</p>
<p>The challenge was run through the <a href="https://greenlab.mit.edu/" target="_blank">MIT Green Labs</a> initiative, a program coordinated by the Office of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS), the Department of Facilities, the Office of Sustainability (MITOS), and <a href="http://www.mygreenlab.org/" target="_blank">My Green Lab</a> – a national nonprofit focused on improving the sustainability of scientific research. MITOS project manager Emma Corbalan organized the competition, which was modeled on the <a href="https://www.freezerchallenge.org/" target="_blank">North American Laboratory Freezer Challenge</a>, an international contest run by My Green Lab and the <a href="http://www.i2sl.org/" target="_blank">International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL)</a>.</p>
<p>Six of the nine MIT labs submitted their results from the challenge to My Green Labs and are in the running for the North American Challenge prizes, which will be awarded at the 2017 I2SL Conference in Boston this October.</p>
<p>“We’ve worked with My Green Lab for several years on the MIT Green Labs program, and Allison Paradise, the executive director, has really been a champion of energy-saving options for our laboratories,” says Niamh Kelly, EHS officer and one of the coordinators of MIT Green Labs. “So this past January, she spearheaded the idea of having a Freezer Challenge and we worked to get the labs involved.”</p>
<p>Lab teams were awarded points in several categories including good management practices such as defrosting freezers, cleaning out freezers and refrigerators, inventorying&nbsp;samples, and storing samples at high density, as well as temperature tuning by determining the appropriate storage temperatures for samples and adjusting ultra-low-temperature freezers accordingly. Studies <a href="http://www.freezerchallenge.org/temperature-tuning.html" target="_blank">have shown</a> that setting freezers to -70 degrees C instead of -80 C can lead to a nearly 40 percent energy reduction.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Points were also awarded for retiring old units or replacing them with more energy-efficient models, as well as adopting cutting-edge sample storage practices like room temperature storage, barcoding samples, and sharing storage space. Laboratories were given room to experiment and be creative with how they chose to reduce freezer energy demands.</p>
<p>“While we encouraged the competitive spirit, we wanted the participants to see this as a chance to become a better functioning unit,” Kelly says. “Labs are more efficient and generally safer in their practices when they are thinking of things holistically, in terms of the materials that they’re using, the equipment that they’re buying, when things are on, and when things are off. A more communicative lab, one that is being intentional and thoughtful about their research, is a safer lab.”</p>
<p>“The Freezer Challenge not only encouraged our lab to perform freezer maintenance and inventorying, but also provoked a collaborative effort with neighboring labs that resulted in the adoption of new freezer management practices within our building,” says Keven Dooley, a research technician in the Department of Biology’s Chisholm Lab.</p>
<p>“The roles of EHS, Facilities, and all of the laboratories fit together to make this project successful,” says Pam Greenley, associate director of EHS’s Environmental Management Program and MIT Green Labs coordinator. “EHS provided a framework to make sure that these new freezer management practices stick, so if a lab’s sustainability champion moves on, the lab continues to think actively about sustainability in the ways they conduct their research.”</p>
<p>Kelly also said that MIT Green Labs hopes to work more closely with MIT’s procurement staff to encourage more energy efficient and sustainable laboratory supplies be accessible for lab members to purchase.</p>
<p>“The Freezer Challenge is part of a much larger movement, through MIT Green Labs and beyond. It’s not just about one person or one lab getting rid of an old freezer, although that is certainly a good start; it’s about a shift in the way we think about every step of the research process,” Kelly says.</p>
<p><strong>Highlights from the 2017 MIT Freezer Challenge (Jan. 15 – May 15):</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>One hundred fourty three freezers units were involved in the challenge.</li>
<li>The combined team of the Sharp and Bhatia Laboratories within the Koch Institute modified the largest number of cold storage units: a total of 45.</li>
<li>Sixty-seven freezers were defrosted or had coils cleaned.</li>
<li>Fifty five freezers had inventory systems created to remove and consolidate samples.</li>
<li>Three units had samples that were moved to a warmer storage temperature.</li>
<li>Ten older units were retired or replaced with more efficient models.</li>
<li>Eight freezers were chilled up from -80 C to -70 C.</li>
<li>The Imperiali Lab in the departments of Chemistry and Biology installed a Styrofoam insulator into an icebox to conserve dry ice shipments and reduce CO<sub>2</sub> emissions.</li>
<li>The Lauffenburger Lab in the Department of Biological Engineering changed a cryobox divider from 9x9 to 10x10; increasing the capacity of the box makes more efficient use of freezer space.</li>
<li>The Niles Lab in the Department of Biological Engineering purchased a smaller freezer for frequently accessed enzymes to reduce the number of times the larger freezer is opened.</li>
</ul>
<p>For more information about conservation efforts in MIT labs visit greenlab.mit.edu, or contact&nbsp;<a href="mailto:greenley@mit.edu">Pam Greenley</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a href="mailto:niamhk@mit.edu">Niamh Kelly</a>&nbsp;in EHS.</p>
“The Freezer Challenge not only encouraged our lab to perform freezer maintenance and inventorying, but also provoked a collaborative effort with neighboring labs that resulted in the adoption of new freezer management practices within our building,” says MIT research technician Keven Dooley.Photo: LiliumBosniacum/Shutterstock Contests and academic competitions, Sustainability, Energy, Environment, Facilities, EmissionsInfinite Cooling wins Cleantech University Prize competitionhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/infinite-cooling-wins-cleantech-university-prize-0808
Startup is meeting global environmental needs by changing the way power plants use water.Tue, 08 Aug 2017 17:15:01 -0400Alexi Taylor Ko | Tata Center for Technology and Designhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/infinite-cooling-wins-cleantech-university-prize-0808<p>Infinite Cooling, an energy startup founded at MIT, pitched its business plan to a panel of energy experts and won first place at the second annual <a href="http://www.cleantechup.org">Cleantech University Prize (UP)</a> national competition in Austin, Texas, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>Infinite Cooling researchers, including MIT Associate Professor Kripa Varanasi and graduate students Maher Damak and Karim Khalil, all from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, have been fine-tuning their business pitch through several rounds of rigorous competition. After receiving the audience choice award at the 2017 <a href="http://www.mit100k.org/accelerate/" target="_blank">MIT $100K Accelerate</a> earlier this year, the team continued on to pitch at the <a href="http://cep.mit.edu" target="_blank">MIT Clean Energy Prize</a> competition, where they qualified for the national DOE Cleantech UP competition.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The Cleantech UP competition launched in 2015 with the goal of engaging and empowering the next generation of clean energy entrepreneurs and innovators to effectively translate their ambitious energy ideas into a reality. Collectively, participants from the annual Cleantech competitions have already formed over 200 ventures and raised over $120 million in follow-on funding.</p>
<p>In addition to receiving training, investor feedback, and personalized coaching, the Infinite Cooling team had the opportunity to form valuable connections in the power industry and startup sector.</p>
<p>“The mentoring has been great, whether it be the business side, the legal side, or the technical side. Quantifying our value proposition and thinking about new aspects of our business has been very useful,” says Khalil.</p>
<p><strong>Reducing power plant water usage and costs</strong></p>
<p>Infinite Cooling’s patent-pending technology uses electrical fields to recapture up to 80 percent of the water vapor plumes that would normally escape from cooling towers of power plants through evaporation. The resulting water from the collected steam is then recycled back into the cooling system.</p>
<p>“The power industry is a particularly interesting application for our technology because it has the biggest water needs. Power plants consume more than half of the country’s water and that inspired us to create a solution,” Khalil explains.</p>
<p>Damak adds, “A 250-megawatt power plant uses approximately 3,000 gallons of water every minute.” With over 7,000 power plants just in the United States, Infinite Cooling technology could have a significant environmental and economic impact worldwide, particularly in the U.S., China, India, and Europe.&nbsp;</p>
<p>By recapturing water vapor plumes and making cooling towers more of a closed system, Infinite Cooling’s technology could decrease power plant water consumption by as much as 30 percent. This translates into savings of millions of gallons of water, and millions of dollars, each year.</p>
<p>The technology could also be a solution for power plant regulatory issues in areas where plume generation curtailment is enforced or costly.</p>
<p><strong>Balanced needs</strong></p>
<p>Infinite Cooling technology highlights a balanced understanding of water and energy needs. If cooling technology is too energy-intensive and costs overshadow potential water savings, power plants may not be willing to adopt such a solution.</p>
<p>“We are really solving the problem at the water and energy nexus,” says Varanasi. Population considerations, he adds, are key: “Energy needs will double and there will be lots of water that is needed for these power plants. So much of that water is lost from the cooling towers, so if our technology can help recapture and reuse that water we could dramatically meet important environmental needs while saving power plants’ enormous water costs.”</p>
<p>“We are grateful for the <a href="https://tatacenter.mit.edu" target="_blank">Tata Center for Technology and Design</a>’s early seed funding that helped us take it from an idea to a proof-of-product stage,” Varanasi says.</p>
<p><strong>Future plans</strong></p>
<p>Infinite Cooling is currently participating in the educational accelerator Delta V at MIT, which will help guide them in building a sustainable business. And with generous support from the MIT Office of Sustainability, Varanasi, Damak, and Khalil have begun an industrial pilot test at the local MIT Central Utilities Plant, where they are monitoring and gathering data on how water consumption changes with the use of their technology.</p>
<p>The next step, Varanasi says, is to spinoff and start a company so that the technology can be brought to not only the power industry, but also other industries such as commercial HVAC, large data centers, hospitals, and even resorts.</p>
<p>This research was supported by the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design.</p>
Left to right: Infinite Cooling researchers graduate student Karim Khalil, associate professor of mechanical engineering Kripa Varanasi, and graduate student Maher Damak.Photo: Alexi Taylor KoAwards, honors and fellowships, Academic contests and competitions, Startups, Energy, Department of Energy (DoE), MIT Energy Initiative, Tata Center, Mechanical engineering, School of Engineering, Sustainability, Water, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E)MIT is set to upgrade its cogeneration plant, improving campus resiliencyhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-upgrading-cogeneration-plant-to-improve-campus-resiliency-0807
Construction expected to begin this month.Mon, 07 Aug 2017 17:50:01 -0400Kristin Lund | MIT Facilitieshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-upgrading-cogeneration-plant-to-improve-campus-resiliency-0807<p>After months of preparation, MIT is planning to break ground this month on an upgrade project that will revitalize its Central Utilities Plant (CUP), a distributed energy resource (DER) that powers the campus microgrid with thermal and electric energy. The CUP upgrade is essential to the Institute’s sustainability goals and will improve campus resiliency by creating an enhanced, more efficient, more flexible power system. This in turn supports efforts in Massachusetts and neighboring states to build overall resiliency across the Northeast.</p>
<p>How does the project support these efforts? Improved campus resiliency at MIT takes pressure off the region’s utility grid — a system experiencing increasing demands and the growing frequency of severe weather events. The flexibility of MIT’s system is based in part on the fact that the campus microgrid can be coupled with the regional grid or can run independently as needed. MIT’s ability to operate on self-generated power in emergency situations will help local utilities meet customer demand and provide more reliable services.</p>
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<p>“Localized distributed energy resources are becoming more crucial to any forward-thinking energy strategy,” says Ken Packard, director of utilities at MIT. “When it’s upgraded, MIT’s smart microgrid will enable MIT to take most or all of our load off the regional grid when necessary. This reduces pressure on the region’s infrastructure and at the same time makes it possible for us to protect the campus from a superstorm or other power outage event. In addition, we are optimizing the plant to provide the cleanest possible energy, whether we are generating it on campus or receiving it from the grid, especially as the grid becomes less carbon intensive.”</p>
<p><strong>A cleaner source for on-campus power</strong></p>
<p>Since 1995, the CUP has relied on a single 22-megawatt (MW) gas turbine — like the turbine that powers a jet engine — to produce electrical and thermal energy simultaneously through cogeneration, a combined heat and power process. The upgrade project will replace this aging turbine with a new one and install a second 22 MW gas turbine, each equipped with a heat recovery steam generator. In addition, the upgrade includes changing fuel use scenarios for five existing boilers to eliminate the use of No. 6 fuel oil on campus and equip them to use cleaner fuels such as natural gas or No. 2 fuel oil. The plant will switch to using natural gas for all normal operations, relegating fuel oil to backup emergency use only. Both new turbines are projected to be in service by 2020.</p>
<p>As it revitalizes the CUP and returns it to state-of-the-art condition, MIT expects to build campus resiliency by improving energy efficiency and increasing on-campus power capacity in support of MIT’s robust research activities. Resiliency is also built into the design of the upgrade, which anticipates evolving technologies and will enable the plant to incorporate future innovations that enhance campus sustainability.</p>
<p>The CUP’s efficiency and environmental gains will result from the installation of new and upgraded equipment as well as the switch to natural gas and the elimination of fuel oil use (except for emergencies). State-of-the-art emissions controls will contribute to the improvements. Starting in 2020, regulated pollutant emissions are expected to be more than 25 percent lower than 2014 emissions levels, and greenhouse gas emissions will be 10 percent lower than 2014 levels, offsetting a projected 10 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions due to energy demands created by new buildings and program growth.</p>
<p>The Institute’s preparation for the upgrade project involved a <a href="http://powering.mit.edu/project-permits" target="_blank">rigorous permitting process</a> that included working with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. On June 21, the project passed a major milestone when the DEP issued the final permit and plan approval stating that the new plant complies with state and federal air quality standards, enabling the project to move forward to construction.</p>
<p><strong>Envisioning the upgraded plant</strong></p>
<p>Upgrade plans for the CUP include building a new addition to the plant on the site of an existing parking lot along Albany Street (N10 Annex Lot). Carefully designed by Ellenzweig to fit the architecture of the surrounding community, the addition’s exterior will include windows that allow passersby to view the cogeneration plant’s operations.</p>
<p>Housing new equipment, the addition will connect with the existing plant via two overhead bridges, one of which will contain a control room that enables operators to run both sections of the plant from a single location. A presentation space in the new addition will enhance the CUP team’s ability to engage with students and researchers on <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-new-fund-allows-sustainability-researchers-use-campus-living-lab-0721" target="_self">living lab activities</a> and host learning opportunities for the broader community.</p>
<p>As part of the project, the streetscape along the perimeter of the plant will be improved with new lighting on public walkways as well as new public seating, bicycle racks, trees, and other plantings. The enhancements are designed to invite pedestrian traffic, creating a stronger connection between the main campus and the north campus.</p>
<p>The project also includes a rooftop system that will capture rainwater for use in the facility’s cooling towers, easing the burden on Cambridge’s storm water system. The perimeter site area will drain into rain gardens and through groundwater recharge.</p>
<p>“What’s unique about the design of this building is that it integrates an elegant exterior with the fundamental needs of the process and machinery inside,” notes Dave Brown, program manager of Utility Projects. “The architects worked closely with the Power Group at Vanderweil Engineers to create a complex solution that looks attractive and simple from the street. Inside, we’ll have very high-tech equipment and state-of-the-art controls, all fitting together in a way that accommodates the process and incorporates innovations. Outside, the pedestrian path is enhanced, and you’ll have the ability to walk by, look in, and see the plant in action.”</p>
<p><strong>Construction overview and activities</strong></p>
<p>The CUP upgrade project team is expecting to begin construction this month. Key equipment is scheduled for installation in 2018, and testing and commissioning is planned for late 2019. Full operation of the upgraded plant is projected for 2020.</p>
<p>In preparation for construction, the N10 and N10 Annex parking lots are closing, with permit holders relocated to other lots on campus. Construction activities expected to start in the next few weeks and continue through the spring of 2018 include site preparation and enabling, site excavation, utility work, and the construction of foundations. Pedestrian and vehicular navigation around the site will be maintained by short detours around the edge of the construction site. As the CUP upgrade project progresses, lane closures on the section of Albany Street in front of the construction site will be required for short periods of time. Police details will be on site to direct and maintain the flow of traffic and two-way access to the Albany Street garage will be maintained throughout construction.</p>
<p>Community members with questions about the CUP upgrade project may <a href="mailto:powering-mit@mit.edu?subject=MIT%20CUP%20upgrade%20query">contact the project team</a>. Updates will be posted to the <a href="http://powering.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Powering MIT project site</a>.</p>
Conceptual sketch of the upgraded Central Utilities Plant, as viewed from Albany StreetIllustration courtesy of Ellenzweig.Facilities, Campus buildings and architecture, Energy, Sustainability, Climate change, Renewable energy, Emissions, Oil and gasHybrid drones carry heavier payloads for greater distances https://news.mit.edu/2017/hybrid-drones-carry-heavier-payloads-greater-distances-0804
Startup’s gas-electric engines may pave way for package delivery and human flight.Fri, 04 Aug 2017 14:00:00 -0400Rob Matheson | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/hybrid-drones-carry-heavier-payloads-greater-distances-0804<p>MIT alumnus Long Phan SM ’99, PhD ’12 is a technology innovator and entrepreneur with several engineering “firsts” under his belt.</p>
<p>In the mid-1990s, Phan helped build the Draper Small Autonomous Aerial Vehicle, the world’s first fully autonomous helicopter. While working on Wall Street in the early 2000s, he became an early pioneer of the high-frequency trading system, which consists of powerful computers that rapidly complete tons of trading transactions.</p>
<p>As co-founder, CEO, and chief technology officer of Top Flight Technologies, Phan is now one of the first entrepreneurs to commercialize hybrid gas-to-electric drones. The drones offer an order-of-magnitude increase in range, payload size, and power over battery-powered counterparts.</p>
<p>Coming to market this fall, the hybrid drones could help make drone package-delivery a reality, and enhance capabilities for crop imaging, military surveillance, emergency response, and remote infrastructure inspection, among other applications. As the startup continues to develop hybrid drone power sources, the technology could also pave the way for human flight.</p>
<p>“The key is having an abundance of power and total energy. That’s what petrol and&nbsp; gasoline gives you,” Phan says. “Using a high-energy-density energy source like gasoline, and converting it to electric power, and doing it efficiently, gives you the equivalent of a ‘super battery.’”</p>
<p>Many drones run on batteries, flying for 15 to 30 minutes between charges, with maximum payloads of 5 pounds. Top Flight’s drone can fly for more than 2.5 hours&nbsp;­— enabling ranges of up to 100 miles — while carrying up to 20 pounds.</p>
<p>The drone can be customized for any number of industrial-strength applications. The engine weighs about 17 pounds and can generate up to 10 kilowatts of power. It uses gasoline to generate the power that drives the lift motors, keeps backup batteries charged, and powers onboard electronics including computing, sensors, and communications equipment. The onboard batteries never need recharging; users just need to refill the gas tank and fly again. Flight control can operate in fully-or semi-autonomous modes.</p>
<p>With the hiring of several MIT alumni, the startup is quietly developing a 100-kilowatt hybrid drone that can lift 100 kilograms — enough to carry a human or two — for up to three hours. NASA, Uber, and many aerospace companies worldwide are currently working on building air taxis, small autonomous planes that will shuttle people around in big cities. But, Phan says, these can stay airborne for only about 10 minutes. Top Flight’s technologies will make them more practical for hauling people from hub to hub.</p>
<p>“With a 100-kilowatt hybrid electric engine, concepts like air taxis become viable,” he says. “By 2020, you may see a drone fly a person.”</p>
<p><strong>“A Toyota Prius for the sky”</strong></p>
<p>Top Flight’s story began in the late 2000s, when Phan was recalled to MIT twice to solve different engineering problems — both times leading to startups.</p>
<p>In 2009, Phan’s former advisor Sanjay Sarma, now the Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor in Mechanical Engineering and vice president for open learning, asked him to enroll in a PhD program to work on wide area thermal imaging. Phan’s research became a core of Phan and Sarma’s startup <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2015/startup-essess-heat-mapping-cars-0105">Essess</a>, which deploys cars with thermal-imaging rooftop rigs that create heat maps of homes and buildings to detect energy leaks.</p>
<p>In 2014, Robert Shin, head of the Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tactical Systems Division at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, approached Phan and asked him to help solve the payload and endurance problems for drones.</p>
<p>Phan and other MIT researchers took a shot at the problem by conceptualizing and designing microscale hybrid electric-gas engines for drones. “We said, ‘What if we build a Toyota Prius for the sky?’” Phan says, laughing.</p>
<p>Hybrid electric engines are easier to build in cars, because, among other things, there are fewer weight and volume restraints. Engines on drones must be small and lightweight while delivering the same amount of power. This produces major technical challenges with excessive vibration and heat. “Often the engine will literally melt because you’re running it so hot,” Phan says.</p>
<p>Using various heat transfer and control techniques — such as strategically incorporating small fans, cooling fins, and rubber vibration dampeners — the team solved those issues and initially slapped a prototype hybrid engine on a generic drone. Their calculations predicted the hybrid drone would fly for an hour — but it flew for nearly 2.5 hours.</p>
<p>“The lightbulb went off,” Phan says. “We were like, ‘What else can you do with a drone that can fly for hours?’”</p>
<p>Phan founded the startup in 2014, along with Sarma and other MIT engineers, and set up operations in a remote-controlled helicopter hobby shop in Malden, Massachusetts, before opening a separate headquarters in that city in 2016. A couple of funding rounds pushed them past $2 million of early venture funding by 2015.</p>
<p>Over the past several years, Top Flight has continued to develop major innovations for the microscale hybrid engine concept, called a “digital gearbox.” Engines for vertical takeoff aircraft, such as helicopters, are complex and difficult to manage, consisting of thousands of mechanical parts. Top Flight’s digital gearbox behaves like those systems but uses electricity to control everything. Gasoline runs to a small generator, creating electric power, which the digital gearbox controls and sends in pulses to the electric motors and electronics. This makes the powering flight much simpler and more efficient, Phan says.</p>
<p>“By pulsing the electricity to the motors, we can control the amount of torque and revolutions per minute of the motor,” Phan says. “We can … achieve the same benefits as a traditional mechanical transmission system, but it’s much more efficient, cost-effective, and scalable.”</p>
<p><strong>Cruising in agile aerospace</strong></p>
<p>Today, Top Flight operates in what it calls “agile aerospace 2.0,” a term representing the valuable vertical range for drones and microsatellites starting from the ground level and rising to 400 feet. Flying closer to the ground means greatly enhanced imaging and sensing resolutions, and other capabilities, such as communications. “If you go outside today, there’s virtually nothing happening in agile aerospace,” Phan says. “But it makes the most sense [for] air taxis or inspecting power lines, or doing logistics or delivery.”</p>
<p>Immediate applications for Top Flight’s drone capabilities may include inspecting infrastructure in remote areas. Some U.S. utilities companies are already tasking drones with inspecting power lines and pipelines that go without routine inspection due to their remote locations. Top Flight’s drones could greatly increase the range of those drones while reducing costs and improving worker safety. They could also help pre- and post-disaster recovery efforts by surveying damage to the networks after natural disasters.</p>
<p>As for delivery drones, Phan says Top Flight can increase the overall value related to increased range. Amazon, Google, UPS, and other large international firms are developing drone-based solutions that can deliver packages to consumer doorsteps. But they’re restricted to carrying, say, a single textbook and maybe 30 minutes of battery life, limiting their range.</p>
<p>“By increasing the range by an order of magnitude, you can capture 100 times more value, due to the increased area coverage, compared to traditional battery drone systems,” Phan says. “[Delivery drones] are not just a gimmick. They’re very feasible soon.”</p>
<p>Top Flight’s drones also hold promise for improved military missions, Phan says. A flock of 1,000 small drones could be deployed for longer times to gather reconnaissance data at a cost similar that of a single large military aircraft.</p>
<p>When Top Flight completes its 100-kilowatt hybrid electric engine, that same concept could also be used to haul, say, barrels of oil, divided into smaller amounts for military convoys in dangerous zones. Generally, this type of shipping is expensive and hazardous due to transportation costs and various risks on the road. “Instead of carrying really big loads in the tons, you use many drones to carry small loads in the 100-kilogram increments, like a pack of mules,” Phan says.</p>
<p>Currently, Top Flight uses an internal combustion engine in its microscale hybrid power systems. Moving forward, the company aims to hybridize gas turbine engines, which are used to power jets and helicopters. “Heat and vibration issues will be magnified, but at the same time they’re much more powerful and almost 100 percent more energy efficient than comparably-sized internal combustion engines,” Phan says. “That’s our next challenge.”</p>
New hybrid gas-to-electric drones from MIT spinout Top Flight Technologies offer an order-of-magnitude increase in range, payload size, and power over battery-powered counterparts. The drones may pave the way for package delivery and human flight.
Courtesy of Top Flight TechnologiesInnovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E), Startups, Mechanical engineering, School of Engineering, Drones, Alumni/ae, Energy, Design, Autonomous vehicles, Batteries, Security studies and military, Agriculture, Transportation, Industry, Lincoln LaboratoryTransparent, flexible solar cells https://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-researchers-develop-graphene-based-transparent-flexible-solar-cells-0728
Researchers develop a novel technique using graphene to create solar cells they can mount on surfaces ranging from glass to plastic to paper and tape.Fri, 28 Jul 2017 18:00:00 -0400Nancy W. Stauffer | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-researchers-develop-graphene-based-transparent-flexible-solar-cells-0728<p>Imagine a future in which solar cells are all around us — on windows and walls, cell phones, laptops, and more. A new flexible, transparent solar cell developed at MIT is bringing&nbsp;that future one step closer.</p>
<p>The device combines low-cost organic (carbon-containing) materials with electrodes of graphene, a flexible, transparent material made from inexpensive and&nbsp;abundant carbon sources. This advance in solar technology was enabled by a novel method of depositing a one-atom-thick layer of graphene onto the solar cell — without damaging nearby sensitive organic materials. Until now, developers of transparent solar cells have typically relied on expensive, brittle electrodes that tend to crack when the device is flexed. The ability to use graphene instead is making possible truly flexible, low-cost, transparent solar cells that can turn virtually any surface into a source of electric power.</p>
<p>Photovoltaic solar cells made of organic compounds would offer a variety of advantages over today’s inorganic silicon solar cells. They would be cheaper and easier to manufacture. They would be lightweight and flexible rather than heavy, rigid, and fragile, and so would be easier to transport, including to remote regions with no central power grid. And they could be transparent. Many organic materials absorb the ultraviolet and infrared components of sunlight but transmit the visible part that our eyes can detect. Organic solar cells could therefore be mounted on surfaces all around us and harvest energy without our noticing them.</p>
<p>Researchers have made significant advances over the past decade toward developing transparent organic solar cells. But they’ve encountered one persistent stumbling block: finding suitable materials for the electrodes that carry current out of the cell.</p>
<p>“It’s rare to find materials in nature that are both electrically conductive and optically transparent,” says <a href="http://energy.mit.edu/profile/jing-kong/">Professor&nbsp;Jing Kong</a>&nbsp;of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).</p>
<p>The most widely used current option is&nbsp;indium tin oxide (ITO). ITO is conductive and transparent, but it’s also stiff and brittle, so when the organic solar cell bends, the ITO electrode tends to crack and lift off. In addition, indium is expensive and relatively rare.</p>
<p>A promising&nbsp;alternative to ITO is graphene, a form of carbon that occurs in one-atom-thick sheets and has remarkable characteristics.&nbsp;It’s highly conductive, flexible, robust, and transparent; and it’s made from inexpensive and ubiquitous carbon. In addition, a graphene electrode can be just 1 nanometer&nbsp;thick — a fraction as thick as an ITO electrode and a far better match for the thin organic solar cell itself.</p>
<p><strong>Graphene challenges</strong></p>
<p>Two key problems have slowed the wholesale adoption of graphene electrodes. The first problem is depositing the graphene electrodes onto the solar cell. Most solar cells are built on substrates such as glass or plastic. The bottom graphene electrode is deposited directly on that substrate — a task that can be achieved by processes involving water, solvents, and heat. The other layers are then added, ending with the top graphene electrode. But putting that top electrode onto the surface of the so-called hole transport layer (HTL) is tricky.</p>
<p>“The HTL dissolves in water, and the organic materials just below it are sensitive to pretty much anything, including water, solvents, and heat,” says EECS graduate student Yi Song, a 2016-2017 Eni-MIT&nbsp;<a href="http://energy.mit.edu/fellows/">Energy Fellow</a>&nbsp;and a member of Kong's Nanomaterials and Electronics Group. As a result, researchers have typically persisted in using an ITO electrode on the top.</p>
<p>The second problem with using graphene is that the two electrodes need to play different roles. The ease with which a given material lets go of electrons is a set property called its work function. But in the solar cell, just one of the electrodes should let electrons flow out easily. As a result, having both electrodes made out of graphene would require changing the work function of one of them so the electrons would know which way to go — and changing the work function of any material is not straightforward.</p>
<p><strong>A smooth graphene transfer</strong></p>
<p>For the past three years, Kong and Song have been working to solve these problems. They first developed and optimized a process for laying down the bottom electrode on their substrate.</p>
<p>In that process, they grow&nbsp;a sheet of graphene on copper foil. They then transfer it onto the substrate using a technique demonstrated by Kong and her colleagues in 2008. They deposit a layer of polymer on top of the graphene sheet to support it and then use an acidic solution to etch the copper foil off the back, ending up with a graphene-polymer stack&nbsp;that they transfer to water for rinsing. They then simply scoop up the floating graphene-polymer stack with the substrate and remove the polymer layer using heat or an acetone rinse. The result: a graphene electrode resting on the substrate.</p>
<p>But scooping the top electrode out of water isn’t feasible. So they instead turn the floating graphene-polymer stack into a kind of stamp, by&nbsp;pressing a half-millimeter-thick frame of silicon rubber onto it. Grasping the frame with tweezers, they lift the stack out, dry it off, and set it down on top of the HTL. Then, with minimal warming, they can peel off the silicon rubber stamp and the polymer support layer, leaving the graphene deposited on the HTL.</p>
<p>Initially, the electrodes that Song and Kong fabricated using this process didn’t perform well. Tests showed that the graphene layer didn’t adhere tightly to the HTL, so current couldn’t flow out efficiently. The obvious solutions to this problem wouldn’t work. Heating the structure enough to make the graphene adhere would damage the sensitive organics. And putting some kind of glue&nbsp;on the bottom of the graphene before laying it down on the HTL would stick the two layers together, but would end up as an added layer between them, decreasing rather than increasing the interfacial contact.</p>
<p>Song decided that adding glue to the stamp might be the way to go — but not as a layer under the graphene.</p>
<p>“We thought, what happens if we spray this very soft, sticky polymer on top of the graphene?” he says. “It would not be in direct contact with the hole transport layer, but because graphene is so thin, perhaps its adhesive properties might remain intact through the graphene.”</p>
<p>To test the idea, the researchers incorporated a layer of ethylene-vinyl acetate, or EVA, into their stamp, right on top of the graphene. The EVA layer is very flexible and thin — sort of like food wrap — and can&nbsp;easily rip apart. But they found that the polymer layer that comes next holds it together, and the arrangement worked just as Song had hoped: The EVA film adheres tightly to the HTL, conforming to any microscopic rough features on the surface and forcing the fine layer of graphene beneath it to do the same.</p>
<p>The process not only improved performance but also brought an unexpected side benefit. The researchers thought their next task would be to find a way to change the work function of the top graphene electrode so it would differ from that of the bottom one, ensuring smooth electron flow. But that step wasn’t necessary. Their technique for laying down the graphene on the HTL actually changes the work function of the electrode to exactly what they need it to be.</p>
<p>“We got lucky,” says Song. “Our top and bottom electrodes just happen to have the correct work functions as a result of the processes we use to make them.”</p>
<p><strong>Putting the electrodes to the test</strong></p>
<p>To see how well their graphene electrodes would perform in practice, the researchers needed to incorporate them into functioning organic solar cells. For that task, they turned to the solar cell fabrication and testing facilities of their colleague&nbsp;<a href="http://energy.mit.edu/profile/vladimir-bulovic/">Vladimir Bulović</a>, the Fariborz Maseeh (1990) Professor of Emerging Technology and Associate Dean for Innovation for the School of Engineering.</p>
<p>For comparison, they built a series of solar cells on rigid glass substrates with electrodes made of graphene, ITO, and aluminum (a standard electrode material). The current densities (or CDs, the amount of current flowing per unit area) and power conversion efficiencies (or PCEs, the fraction of incoming solar power converted to electricity)&nbsp;for the new flexible graphene/graphene devices and the standard rigid ITO/graphene devices were comparable. They were&nbsp;lower than those of the devices with one aluminum electrode, but that was a finding they expected.</p>
<p>“An aluminum electrode on the bottom will reflect some of the incoming light back into the solar cell, so the device overall can absorb more of the sun’s energy than a transparent device can,” says Kong.</p>
<p>The PCEs for all their graphene/graphene devices — on rigid glass substrates as&nbsp;well as flexible substrates — ranged from 2.8 percent&nbsp;to 4.1 percent. While those values are well below the PCEs of existing commercial solar panels, they’re a significant improvement over PCEs achieved in prior work involving semitransparent devices with all-graphene electrodes,&nbsp;the researchers say.</p>
<p>Measurements of the transparency of their graphene/graphene devices yielded further encouraging results. The human eye can detect light at wavelengths between about 400 nanometers&nbsp;and 700 nanometers. The all-graphene devices showed optical transmittance of 61 percent&nbsp;across the whole visible regime and up to 69 percent&nbsp;at 550 nanometers. “Those values [for transmittance] are among the highest for transparent solar cells with comparable power conversion efficiencies in the literature,” says Kong.</p>
<p><strong>Flexible substrates, bending behavior</strong></p>
<p>The researchers note that their organic solar cell can be deposited on any kind of surface, rigid or flexible, transparent or not. “If you want to put it on the surface of your car, for instance, it won’t look bad,” says Kong. “You’ll be able to see through to what was originally there.”</p>
<p>To demonstrate that versatility, they deposited their graphene-graphene devices onto flexible substrates including plastic, opaque paper, and translucent Kapton tape. Measurements show that the performance of the devices is roughly equal on the three flexible substrates — and only slightly lower than those made on glass, likely because the surfaces are rougher so there’s a greater potential for poor contact.</p>
<p>The ability to deposit the solar cell on any surface makes it promising for use on consumer electronics — a field that’s growing rapidly worldwide. For example, solar cells could be fabricated directly on cell phones and laptops rather than made separately and then installed, a change that would significantly reduce manufacturing costs.</p>
<p>They would also be well-suited for future devices such as peel-and-stick solar cells and paper electronics. Since those devices would inevitably be bent and folded, the researchers subjected their samples to the same treatment. While all of their devices — including those with ITO electrodes — could be folded repeatedly, those with graphene electrodes could be bent far more tightly before their output started to decline.</p>
<p><strong>Future goals</strong></p>
<p>The researchers are now working to improve the efficiency of their graphene-based organic solar cells without sacrificing transparency. (Increasing the amount of active area would push up the PCE, but transparency would drop.) According to their calculations, the maximum theoretical PCE achievable at their current level of transparency is 10 percent.</p>
<p>“Our best PCE is about 4 percent, so we still have some way to go,” says Song.</p>
<p>They’re also now considering how best to scale up their solar cells into the large-area devices needed to cover entire windows and walls, where they could efficiently generate power while remaining virtually invisible to the human eye.</p>
<div></div>
<p>This research was supported by the Italian energy company Eni S.p.A. as part of the Eni-MIT Alliance Solar Frontiers Center. Eni is a Founding Member of the MIT Energy Initiative.</p>
<p><em>This article appeared&nbsp;in the&nbsp;<a href="http://energy.mit.edu/energy-futures/spring-2017/" style="color: rgb(246, 37, 18); text-decoration-line: none;">Spring 2017</a>&nbsp;issue of&nbsp;</em>Energy Futures,<em>&nbsp;the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative.</em></p>
A new flexible graphene solar cell developed at MIT is seen in the transparent region at the center of this sample. Around its edges are metal contacts on which probes can be attached during tests of device performance.Photo: Stuart DarschSchool of Engineering, Alternative energy, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (eecs), Energy, Graphene, MIT Energy Initiative, Research, Renewable energy, Solar, Sustainability, Photovoltaics, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Chemistry, Materials Science and EngineeringSproutsIO aims to power a “Personal Produce” movementhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/sproutsio-smart-microgarden-personal-produce-0727
Smart, soil-free microgarden lets users optimize growing conditions while cutting water and resource use.Wed, 26 Jul 2017 23:59:59 -0400Rob Matheson | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/sproutsio-smart-microgarden-personal-produce-0727<p>MIT Media Lab alumna Jennifer Broutin Farah SM ’13, CEO and co-founder of SproutsIO, has spent nearly a decade innovating in urban farming, designing small- and large-scale gardening systems that let anyone grow food, anywhere, at any time.</p>
<p>All this work will soon culminate with the commercial release of her startup’s smart, app-controlled microgarden that lets consumers optimize, customize, and monitor the growth of certain fruits, vegetables, and herbs year-round. Moreover, the soil-free system uses only 2 percent of the water and 40 percent of the nutrients typically used for soil-grown plants.</p>
<p>After piloting the system in Boston homes and restaurants, and following a successful Kickstarter campaign last fall, SproutsIO is ramping up production and hitting the shelves in a few months. Philosophically, the aim is to power a “personal produce” movement, Farah says, in which more people grow their own food, encouraging healthier eating and cutting down on waste.</p>
<p>“Over the last 60 years, we’ve gotten out of touch with growing our food,” Farah says. “But when you grow your own food, you care more about what happens to it. You’re not going to throw it away, you’re going to know exactly what’s going into your plants, you’re going to share your food with friends and family. It gives a new meaning to produce.”</p>
<p><strong>Customized plants</strong></p>
<p>Tailoring plants for taste preferences may not be well-known outside of the wine-making world, where grapes are grown under specific climatic conditions to produce specific flavors. But produce and herbs have similar peculiarities. Even within a given species or variety, individual plants can have different characteristics and growing needs.</p>
<p>“Most of that is dependent on the environment,” Farah says. “If you can customize the lighting, the water, and the nutrients, you can really optimize certain variations in the plants, according to how you want them to taste. SproutsIO can reproduce these specific climatic conditions to a very precise degree.”</p>
<p>SproutsIO consists of a growing device, which is a large basin with a curving, overhead adjustable lamp attached; a replaceable and compostable “sIO” seed refill with growing media, seeds, and nutrients, that’s dropped into the growing device; and “SproutsIOGrow” software that includes a mobile app that collects and analyzes growth data and controls the system. Currently, the system supports basil, kale, wheatgrass, arugula, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, tea, and a variety of plants from root vegetables to fruiting plants.</p>
<p>The SproutsIO system has a number of innovations developed by the startup, stemming from early research at MIT. The hybrid hydroculture system, for instance, consists of “hydroponic” and “aeroponic” growing, where roots are submerged in or misted with water and nutrients. Varying the watering process optimizes water and nutrient use while supporting the growth of different plants at different phases. A tomato plant, for instance, grows large roots during the fruiting stage. The system can lift the plant up at that time to let the roots grow larger, but still deliver water and nutrients by misting.</p>
<p>There’s also a custom LED light that automatically adjusts, depending on need. If the device is located near a window, where sunlight is plentiful, the light will dim; if the sunlight diminishes or if the device is placed in darker areas, the light shines brighter. The system uses about half the electricity of a 60-watt incandescent light bulb.</p>
<p>Sensors monitor plant growth and transmit data to what Farah calls the “backbone” of the system: SproutsIOGrow. The app lets users customize their plants and monitor the plant’s growth in real-time. Depending on light and nutrients added, for instance, tomatoes can be grown to taste sweeter or more savory.</p>
<p>The app also provides predictive growth cycles and connects to personal activity trackers, meal planners, and calendars to help with meal scheduling. A built-in camera takes regular snapshots of growing plants for health diagnostics and to create time-lapse images for users on the app.</p>
<p><a name="_gjdgxs"></a>Growing plants in such a controlled environment boosts growth efficiency by six times and cuts the length of growth cycles by 50 percent over traditional gardening, according to the startup.</p>
<p>Farah says people often ask her if all the technology tends to remove people from the growing process. It’s the exact opposite, she says: “Technology creates a whole new lens on the growing process. Most of us don’t understand how plants grow because they exist on a totally different time scale. But we show people how the plants grow over time and how they react to certain changes. That’s really eye-opening.”</p>
<p><strong>Shrinking greenhouses</strong></p>
<p>Today’s SproutsIO system is the product of years of refinement for mass adoption. In 2009, while working for New York City’s Department of Parks and Recreation, Farah designed a “vertically integrated greenhouse” system, called the Façade Farm. The system consisted of a large metal frame that could be affixed to the side of a building. Long metal planters were installed inside like shelves, and a pump system was installed on the floor. The boxes could be placed up and down a building like gardening balconies.</p>
<p>Though never fully realized, the system got Farah thinking about bringing growing systems to urban areas — a concept that’s popular now but was fairly novel at the time. Building massive structures, however, was a time-consuming and complex process. In 2011, Farah enrolled in the Media Lab, in the Changing Places Group, to develop the idea on a smaller scale.</p>
<p>For her master’s thesis, she built a slightly smaller indoor aeroponic system, called SeedPod, that consisted of modular planters made of inflatable plastic and suspended in three tiers by steel rods. The planters were equipped with sensors for monitoring the plants. An automated pump provided water and nutrients to each planter.</p>
<p>Partnering with Boston Public Schools, Farah installed the system in a middle school in Roxbury. Students started growing plants to eat, and teachers incorporated the gardening into their lessons. “It clicked that the more involved people are with growing food, the more they cared about what happened to it,” she says.</p>
<p>In 2012, Farah shrunk the system further, developing a microgardening “station” that could be used in homes. A number of growing pods — moving toward today’s SproutsIO device — were attached to a vertical pole at different levels, resembling a tree of pods. Included were early versions of the misting system, lighting, and sensors viewed through an app.</p>
<p>In 2013, Farah launched SproutsIO and entered the project into the $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, where she was a semifinalist, and a Founders.org entrepreneurship competition, which she won. Through MIT Sloan School of Management and Media Lab venture-based classes, she honed the business idea and fleshed out her startup’s larger “personal produce” mission. “Those courses were very inspiring classes that helped to get students thinking about how their ideas apply to larger world context,” she says.</p>
<p>Years of user feedback and research and development helped the startup refine the product into today’s SproutsIO system. Early prototypes, in fact, were sent to Barbara Lynch, a renowned Boston chef who is now advisor to the startup. “What better way to really understand how well the system can perform than putting it in a professional chef’s kitchen?” Farah says. SproutsIO continues to work with a number of professional chefs across the nation.</p>
<p>Ultimately, however, what benefit does a smart microgarden offer over simply growing potted plants at home? “At a base level, we make it easier for people to start growing,” Farah says. But she also believes the system is “a small-scale solution that can have a big impact.”</p>
<p>Individual SproutsIO units can save consumers water, energy, and resources, while easing them into growing their own food. If enough people adopt the system, she says, it could save significant amounts of water and encourage local, efficient growing. But the concept of optimized watering systems, if designed at scale, could also benefit a world where around 70 percent of fresh water is used for industrial agricultural, she adds.</p>
<p>“We need to be considering different solutions for growing that start to optimize the needs of the plant, rather than just pouring tons of water and nutrients on them,” she says.</p>
After piloting its smart microgardening system in Boston homes and restaurants, and following a successful Kickstarter campaign last fall, SproutsIO is ramping up production and hitting the shelves in a few months.
Courtesy of SproutsIO Inc.Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E), Startups, Alumni/ae, Media Lab, School of Architecture and Planning, Water, Sustainability, Environment, Energy, Apps, Invention, Technology and society, Food, AgricultureLaying the foundation for new energy technologyhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-chemistry-professor-todd-van-voorhis-laying-foundation-of-new-energy-technologies-0724
Theoretical chemist Troy Van Voorhis probes big energy-related questions, scrutinizing electrons and chemical bonds to improve sustainable energy solutions.Mon, 24 Jul 2017 11:40:01 -0400Leda Zimmerman | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-chemistry-professor-todd-van-voorhis-laying-foundation-of-new-energy-technologies-0724<p>Troy Van Voorhis remembers&nbsp;being jolted by the announcement in&nbsp;1989, when he was in the seventh grade, that researchers had successfully demonstrated cold fusion.</p>
<p>“My science teacher canceled our regular class to explain this remarkable development,” recalls Van Voorhis, the Haslam and Dewey Professor of Chemistry at MIT. “The idea really captured my imagination, and I was hooked on the possibility that you could produce energy from the physical reactions of chemicals.”</p>
<p>Although the&nbsp;apparent breakthrough quickly proved to be spurious science, it ignited Van Voorhis’&nbsp;lifelong interest in energy and chemistry. Nearly three decades later, the theoretical chemist&nbsp;investigates what he calls “energy-related big questions.” He scrutinizes and models the behavior of electrons in research that, among other things, seeks to improve the photovoltaic cells used in solar energy; to develop new, high-efficiency indoor lighting; and to create chemical storage technology for electricity generated by renewable energy technologies.</p>
<p>While his fuse for scientific discovery was lit early on, it took time for Van Voorhis to find his niche exploring the intricate dynamics of molecules involved in processes that produce, transfer, and store chemical energy.</p>
<p>Raised in the Northside section of Indianapolis by a father who taught junior high school mathematics and a mother who was a professor of social work, Van Voorhis was, in his own words, a “shy, introverted child.” In high school, he found theater a constructive way to break out of his shell.&nbsp;“Interacting with an audience was easier than interacting with individuals,” he says.</p>
<p>Van Voorhis also spent a lot of time “playing with mathematics problems because it was something you could do on your own.” But he worried about pursuing the subject as a college major because, he says, “it seemed too abstract.” Instead, he decided to pair math with chemistry, another area he excelled in during high school.</p>
<p>In college, as he describes it, Van Voorhis pursued “curiosity-based science,” first at Rice University, where he earned his BA as a double major in 1997, and then at the University of California at Berkeley, where he conducted his graduate studies in chemistry.&nbsp;One area that captured his imagination involved finding better ways to describe mathematically how chemical bonds rupture. “It was a question I thought sounded interesting, a difficult problem,” he says.&nbsp;“But it was not something that proved to be useful to other people.”</p>
<p><strong>Pairing up</strong></p>
<p>It was not until Van Voorhis landed at MIT, he says, that he understood that his technical tools “might actually solve really important problems.” He credits a formative encounter in his early days as an assistant professor with bringing about this revelation.</p>
<p>“I sat down to lunch with the late, great theoretical chemist [and former dean of the School of Science] Robert Silbey and told him I was stuck on a direction to take as I started out,” Van Voorhis recalls. “He told me to talk to experimentalists at MIT, who were working on the most exciting problems, ask them how I could help them, and then hitch myself to their wagons.”</p>
<p>Wasting no time, Van Voorhis found an eager experimentalist partner in&nbsp;Marc Baldo, who is now a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Baldo, who had also recently arrived at MIT, was looking into&nbsp;the application&nbsp;and potential benefits of organic chemicals in light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and solar cells. “I told him my lab worked on simulations involving electrons and chemical bonds and maybe we could help him,” says Van Voorhis. “It was the start of a beautiful friendship.”</p>
<p>It also launched a fruitful research collaboration. In their very first project together, Van Voorhis provided the computational firepower to help Baldo demonstrate that subtle manipulations of energy states in organic LEDs could improve efficiency in light output. The technical skills that Van Voorhis brought to MIT had found a novel and practical outlet.</p>
<p>Starting in 2005, Van Voorhis and Baldo began focusing on ways to push past longstanding limits in a range of energy technologies, starting with solar power from photovoltaic (PV) cells.</p>
<p>Since the first silicon solar PV panels were invented in the 1960s, they have managed to achieve at best 25 percent efficiency as they absorb photons from the sun and convert that energy into&nbsp;electrical current.</p>
<p>Van Voorhis and Baldo demonstrated that it was possible to overcome this limit. Normally, a single photon yields one electron plus waste heat. But by lining solar cells with organic molecules, they figured out how to take a photon and produce two electrons, generating twice as much electricity and less waste heat.</p>
<p>“Marc and I theoretically proved it might be possible to use fission in a device to make a solar cell more than 100 percent&nbsp;efficient,” says Van Voorhis.</p>
<p><strong>Catalyzing brighter solutions</strong></p>
<p>In other domains of research, Van Voorhis and Baldo are testing organic dyes that could help make organic LEDs brighter and perhaps as long-lasting as current conventional LEDs — up to 100,000 hours.</p>
<p>They are also actively investigating chemical-based energy storage in the hopes of helping to bring renewable energy sources such as solar to scale. “The energy content of a normal gas-powered car battery, which weighs 25 pounds, is the same as a quarter-pound Big Mac,” Van Voorhis says. “There’s a huge incentive to convert electricity into chemical fuels that are energy-dense, but we need to find the right abundant and cheap catalyst for making chemical conversions possible.”</p>
<p>One catalyst candidate, a super-thin sheet of graphitic carbon, doped with elements such as nitrogen, boron, or sulfur, presents intriguing possibilities as the basis for a new type of fuel cell. Van Voorhis is now running high-throughput computational simulations to figure out the best kind of molecules to pair with graphite for the optimal electrochemical conversion cocktail.</p>
<p>For these research endeavors, Van Voorhis draws inspiration not only from faculty colleagues but also from students. In his primary teaching assignment, the introductory class 5.111 (Principles of Chemical Science), Van Voorhis says he incorporates “bits from my research on photovoltaics and alternative fuels, helping students make connections and see the relevance of these ideas.”</p>
<p>“My greatest pleasure in teaching is seeing the lightbulb go on for students — that instant where a topic goes from a complete mystery to something that is just starting to make sense,” he says.</p>
<p>Van Voorhis views mentoring graduate students as a lifelong relationship.</p>
<p>“My job as an advisor is to help them become independent scientists, and I find that exposing them to problems of long-range societal relevance like energy or the environment is crucial to them developing into responsible, mature researchers who will be able to devote their skills to problems of significance,” he says.</p>
<p>He says he is also heartened to see so many among his MIT students who are “socially conscious and motivated to work on energy questions,” including in his own&nbsp;laboratory. He finds this engagement reassuring, given that many of the challenges he works on in energy technology may take years to solve.</p>
<p>“With problems this big, I have to be comfortable being a cog in a very large machine, where I do the part I’m good at and rely on someone else to do their part, and together we solve the problem.”</p>
<p><em>This article appears in the <a href="http://energy.mit.edu/energy-futures/spring-2017/">Spring 2017</a> issue of&nbsp;</em>Energy Futures,<em>&nbsp;the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative.</em></p>
Troy Van Voorhis is the Haslam and Dewey Professor of Chemistry. Photo: Justin KnightSchool of Science, Alternative energy, Chemistry, Climate change, Energy, Energy storage, Faculty, Mathematics, MIT Energy Initiative, Research, SolarHarnessing the right amount of sunshinehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/protein-moss-algae-defend-against-sunlight-0717
Study reveals the mechanisms of a protein that helps moss and green algae defend against too much light.Mon, 17 Jul 2017 10:59:59 -0400Anne Trafton | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/protein-moss-algae-defend-against-sunlight-0717<p>Photosynthesis, which allows energy from the sun to be converted into life-sustaining sugars, can also be hazardous to green plants. If they absorb too much sunlight, the extra energy destroys their tissue.</p>
<p>To combat this, green plants have developed a defense mechanism known as photoprotection, which allows them to dissipate the extra energy. Researchers from MIT and the University of Verona have now discovered how the key protein in this process allows moss and green algae to protect themselves from too much sun.</p>
<p>The researchers found that the protein, embedded in the membranes in the chloroplast, can switch between different states in response to changes in sunlight. When moss and green algae absorb more sunlight than they need, this protein releases the energy as heat, preventing it from building up and damaging the cells. The protein can act within seconds of a change in sun exposure, such as when the sun appears from behind a cloud.</p>
<p>“These photoprotective mechanisms have evolved from the fact that sunlight is not constant. There are sunny days; there are cloudy days. Clouds may briefly pass over, or the plant can be transiently in the shade,” says Gabriela Schlau-Cohen, an MIT assistant professor of chemistry and the senior author of the study.</p>
<p>Learning more about how this protein works could allow scientists to alter it in a way that would promote more photosynthesis, potentially increasing the biomass yield of both crops and algae grown for biofuels, Schlau-Cohen says.</p>
<p>MIT postdoc Toru Kondo is the lead author of the paper, which appears in <em>Nature Chemistry</em>. Other authors are MIT graduate student Wei Jia Chen and University of Verona researchers Alberta Pinnola, Luca Dall’Osto, and Roberto Bassi.</p>
<p><strong>Too much of a good thing</strong></p>
<p>During photosynthesis, specialized proteins known as light-harvesting complexes, with the help of pigments such as chlorophyll, absorb light energy in the form of photons. These photons drive a series of reactions that produce sugar molecules, allowing plants to store energy for later use.</p>
<p>Most plants absorb far more sunlight than they can actually use. In very sunny conditions, they convert only about 30 percent of the available sunlight into sugar, while the rest is released as heat.</p>
<p>“Under sunny conditions, the plants have energy sitting around that is too much for the capacity of the rest of the molecular machinery,” Schlau-Cohen says.</p>
<p>If this energy is allowed to remain in the plant cells, it creates harmful molecules called free radicals that can damage proteins and other important cellular molecules.</p>
<p>It was discovered several years ago that a protein called light-harvesting complex stress-related 1 (LHCSR1) is the major player in photoprotection that occurs over short timescales (seconds to minutes) in green algae and moss. This protein is embedded in the membranes in the chloroplast and interacts with chlorophyll and carotenoids, another type of light-absorbing pigment. However, the mechanism of how this photoprotection works was not known.</p>
<p>In this study, Schlau-Cohen and her colleagues used a very sensitive microscope that can analyze single proteins to determine how the LHCSR1 protein found in moss reacts to different light conditions. They discovered that the protein can assume three distinct conformations, which correspond to different functions.</p>
<p>Under cloudy or shady conditions, LHCSR1 simply absorbs photons and passes the energy on into the rest of the photosynthetic machinery. When the sun comes out and energy intake rises, LHCSR1 switches to another conformation within seconds. This switch is caused by a decrease in pH, which occurs when too many hydrogen ions are generated by water-splitting during photosynthesis.</p>
<p>When this occurs, the protein becomes locked into a rigid structure that allows it to convert more of the absorbed light energy into heat, through a mechanism that is not fully known.</p>
<p>Photoprotection can also be turned on more gradually by another feedback mechanism involving pH. A decrease in pH activates an enzyme that changes the molecular composition of a carotenoid that interacts with LHCSR1. This leads the protein to favor and stabilize its photoprotective state.</p>
<p>“Both of these states are controlled by a feedback loop within the organism. The pH is a short timescale response, and the molecular composition is a longer timescale response,” Schlau-Cohen says.</p>
<p><strong>Boosting photosynthesis</strong></p>
<p>Green plants tend to turn on photoprotection very quickly in response to sun, and they are slow to turn it off, Schlau-Cohen says. That helps plants to survive, but it means that they are not producing as much biomass as they could. A study published in <em>Science</em> last November showed that speeding up plants’ ability to turn off photoprotection could boost biomass production by 15 percent under natural field conditions.</p>
<p>Schlau-Cohen’s colleagues at the University of Verona are now creating mutated versions of the LHCSR1protein, which the researchers plan to test to see if they have the ability to produce more biomass while still offering some photoprotection.</p>
<p>“Photoprotection is critical for fitness, so if you knock out photoprotection altogether they don’t grow very well,” Schlau-Cohen says. “We can look at what pieces of this process are responsible for which parts of the photoprotective loop, and then we can be a little bit smarter about what we overexpress and what we knock out.”</p>
<p>The research was funded by the Center for Excitonics, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy; a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar Award; and the European Economic Community projects AccliPhot and SE2B.</p>
Researchers have discovered how moss and green algae can protect themselves from too much sun.
Research, Chemistry, Plants, Energy, Biofuels, Agriculture, School of Science, Department of Energy (DoE)3 Questions: The future of the electric utilityhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-3-questions-francis-o-sullivan-future-of-electric-utilities-0714
MIT Energy Initiative Director of Research Francis O’Sullivan reflects on current trends in the utility industry, as well as potential solutions to current challenges.Fri, 14 Jul 2017 16:15:01 -0400Francesca McCaffrey | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-3-questions-francis-o-sullivan-future-of-electric-utilities-0714<p><em>Francis O’Sullivan, director of research for&nbsp;the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), recently led discussions about&nbsp;the future of the electric grid and clean energy technologies with leaders in industry, government, and academia at MITEI’s Associate Member Symposium. In the wake of the symposium, O’Sullivan reflects on several of its main themes: current trends in the industry, changes in customer behavior, and innovative&nbsp;potential responses to the challenges facing the utility industry today.</em></p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>There’s been a lot of talk about three current megatrends&nbsp;in energy: decentralization, digitalization, and decarbonization. Can you address briefly what each of these entails, and what’s driving this movement?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>These three megatrends are deeply connected. First, broadly, people appreciate that decarbonization is critical if we are to address climate change in a meaningful way, and electricity is the sector that can be decarbonized most rapidly. Today, ever-improving economics are driving a secular expansion in the use of clean energy technologies, particularly wind and solar for power generation. Solar is especially important, because as a technology, it’s unique. It can be effectively deployed at any scale, which adds flexibility to how power systems can be designed. It also provides end users with a new option for meeting their individual energy needs. People can choose solar on an individual, house-to-house basis.</p>
<p>In this way, decarbonization is connected to decentralization. It’s not just individual households driving decentralization, either — in fact, commercial and industry users are now in the vanguard of distributed energy adoption. The ambition is to realize a future energy system that is cleaner, more decentralized, and has lower operating costs and higher resiliency.</p>
<p>This is where digitalization comes in. Having these new assets connected to the system is one thing, but you need to be able to control and coordinate them in real time if their efficiency and resiliency potential is to be fully realized.</p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>How do you see electricity customers’ behavior changing, and what does this mean for utilities?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>Historically, consumers had very little choice in how they got their electricity. Then, starting in the ’90s, the restructuring of the energy industry and the introduction of retail choice meant that consumers gained the ability to choose from whom they bought their electricity. However, the modes of generation were still traditional ones. Today’s improved technology means people have much more choice now in terms of not just who supplies their power, but also how it is generated. There’s a subset of the public that actively seeks that greater choice. They’re interested in the environmental impact of their energy decisions. Cost-effectiveness and added resiliency are also important drivers behind this desire for greater diversity in energy services.</p>
<p>For the first time we now have avenues for offering electricity customers more choice. Utilities are responding to the fact that consumers want more bespoke solutions. The adoption of smart energy devices like Nest, for example, are indicative of this larger movement towards greater transparency and customer empowerment.</p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>What kind of infrastructure challenges are utilities facing now, and what kinds of emerging technologies are needed to help overcome them?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>The age of a utility’s infrastructure and the rate of demand growth across the region it covers are normal stresses that are going to affect any system over the years. More salient at this moment in time is the need to put in place the digital infrastructure that will support the effective integration of today’s new generation and storage technologies onto the grid. In addition to offering a pathway to greater resiliency and environmental benefits, a more digitized system has the potential to unlock new commercial value and improve overall welfare if it is used to communicate more accurate price signals for services up and down the electricity value chain that are more highly resolved spatially and temporally.</p>
<p>There’s pressure on utilities to make these infrastructure improvements, but there’s also a tension with regulators who must ensure that these investments are just and reasonable&nbsp;and for the broad benefit of ratepayers. The truth is, though, that we need this new digitized infrastructure if we wish to fully realize the technical and indeed economic benefits that the power sector’s newly expanded technology toolbox can offer.</p>
MIT Energy Initiative Director of Research Francis O'Sullivan is pondering decarbonization, decentralization, and the smart electric grid of the future.Photo: Dominick ReuterMIT Energy Initiative, Alternative energy, Carbon dioxide, Climate change, Energy, Energy storage, Global Warming, Emissions, Renewable energy, Research, Solar, Economics, 3 Questions, StaffStudy suggests route to improving rechargeable lithium batterieshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/solid-electrolyte-improving-rechargeable-lithium-batteries-0713
Smooth surfaces may prevent harmful deposits from working their way into a solid electrolyte.Wed, 12 Jul 2017 23:59:59 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/solid-electrolyte-improving-rechargeable-lithium-batteries-0713<p>Most of today’s lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from cars to phones, use a liquid as the electrolyte between two electrodes. Using a solid electrolyte instead could offer major advantages for both safety and energy storage capacity, but attempts to do this have faced unexpected challenges.</p>
<p>Researchers now report that the problem may be an incorrect interpretation of how such batteries fail. The new findings, which could open new avenues for developing lithium batteries with solid electrolytes, are reported in the journal <em>Advanced Energy Materials</em>, in a paper by Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at MIT; W. Craig Carter, the POSCO Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT; and eight others.</p>
<p>The electrolyte in a battery is the material in between the positive and negative electrodes — a sort of filling in the battery sandwich. Whenever the battery gets charged or drained, ions (electrically charged atoms or molecules) cross through the electrolyte from one electrode to the other.</p>
<p>But these liquid electrolytes can be flammable, and they’ve been responsible for some fires caused by such batteries. They are also prone to the formation of dendrites — thin, fingerlike projections of metal that build up from one electrode and, if they reach all the way across to the other electrode, can create a short-circuit that could damage the battery.</p>
<p>Researchers have tried to get around these problems by using an electrolyte made out of solid materials, such as some ceramics. This could eliminate the flammability issue and offer other big benefits, but tests have shown that such materials tend to perform somewhat erratically and are more prone to short-circuits than expected.</p>
<p>The problem, according to this study, is that researchers have been focusing on the wrong properties in their search for a solid electrolyte material. The prevailing idea was that the material’s firmness or squishiness (a property called shear modulus) determined whether dendrites could penetrate into the electrolyte. But the new analysis showed that it’s the smoothness of the surface that matters most. Microscopic nicks and scratches on the electrolyte’s surface can provide a toehold for the metallic deposits to begin to force their way in, the researchers found.</p>
<p>This suggests, Chiang says, that simply focusing on achieving smoother surfaces could eliminate or greatly reduce the problem of dendrite formation in batteries with a solid electrolyte. In addition to avoiding the flammability problem associated with liquid electrolytes, this approach could make it possible to use a solid lithium metal electrode as well. Doing so could potentially double a lithium-ion battery’s energy capacity — that is, its ability to store energy for a given weight, which is crucial for both vehicles and portable devices.</p>
<p>“The formation of dendrites, leading to eventual short-circuit failures, has been the main reason that lithium-metal rechargeable batteries have not been possible,” Chiang explains. (Lithium-metal electrodes are commonly used in nonrechargeable batteries, but that’s because dendrites only form during the charging process.)</p>
<p>The problem of dendrite formation in lithium rechargeable batteries was first recognized in the early 1970s, Chiang says, “and 45 years later that problem has still not been solved. But the goal is still tantalizing,” because of the potential to double a battery’s capacity by using lithium metal electrodes.</p>
<p>In the last few years, a number of groups have been trying to develop solid electrolytes as a way of enabling the use of lithium metal electrodes. There are two main types being worked on, Chiang says: lithium phosphorus sulfides, and metal oxides. With all these research efforts, one of the prevailing thoughts was that the material needed to be stiff, not elastic. But these materials have tended to show inconsistent and confusing results in lab tests.</p>
<p>The idea made sense, Chiang says — a stiffer material should be more resistant to something trying to press into its surface. But the new work, in which the team tested samples of four different varieties of potential solid electrolyte materials and observed the details of how they performed during charging and discharging cycles, showed that the way dendrites actually form in stiff solid materials follows a completely different process than those that form in liquid electrolytes.</p>
<p>On the solid surfaces, lithium from one of the electrodes begins to be deposited, through an electrochemical reaction, onto any tiny defect that exists on the electrolyte’s surface, including tiny pits, cracks, and scratches. Once the initial deposit forms on such a defect, it continues to build — and, surprisingly, the buildup extends from the dendrite’s tip, not from its base, as it forces its way into the solid, acting like a wedge as it goes and opening an ever-wider crack.</p>
<p>These materials are “very sensitive to the number and size of surface defects, not to the bulk properties” of the material, Chiang says. “It’s the crack propagation that leads to failure. … It tells us that what we should be focusing on more is the quality of the surfaces, on how smooth and defect-free we can make these solid electrolyte films.”</p>
<p>“I believe that this high-quality and novel work will reset the thinking about how to engineer practical lithium metal solid-state batteries,” says Alan Luntz, a consulting professor for metal-air battery research at Stanford University, who was not involved in this research. “The authors have shown that a different mechanism governs lithium metal shorting in lithium solid-state batteries than in liquid or polymer lithium metal batteries where dendrites form. … This implies that if lithium metal solid-state batteries are ever to have practical current densities, then careful minimization of all structural defects at the lithium metal and electrolyte interface is essential,” he says.</p>
<p>Luntz adds, “I consider it to be an extremely important contribution to the goal of developing practical and safe all solid-state batteries.”</p>
<p>The research team included Lukas Porz, Tushar Swamy, Daniel Rettenwander, and Harry Thomas at MIT; Stefan Berendts at the Technical University of Berlin; Reinhard Uecker at the Leibnitz Institute for Crystal Growth in Berlin; Brian Sheldon at Brown University; and Till Fromling at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany.</p>
New research suggests that achieving smoother surfaces on a solid electrolyte could eliminate or greatly reduce the problem of dendrite formation.
Courtesy of the researchersResearch, Batteries, Energy, Manufacturing, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E), DMSE, Materials Science and Engineering, School of Engineering3 Questions: Angela Belcher and Kristala Prather on the promise of energy biosciencehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/3q-angela-belcher-kristala-prather-mitei-energy-bioscience-low-carbon-energy-center-0710
Engineers and co-directors of MITEI&#039;s Energy Bioscience Low-Carbon Energy Center discuss their vision for transforming the energy system.Mon, 10 Jul 2017 10:10:01 -0400Kathryn M. O'Neill | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/3q-angela-belcher-kristala-prather-mitei-energy-bioscience-low-carbon-energy-center-0710<p><em>The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) continues to develop and expand its eight Low-Carbon Energy Centers, which facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration among MIT researchers, industry, and government to advance research in technology areas critical to addressing climate change. Here, the directors of the center focused on energy bioscience — Angela M. Belcher, the James Mason Crafts Professor of Biological Engineering and Materials Science,&nbsp;and Kristala L.J. Prather, the Arthur D. Little Professor of Chemical Engineering — discuss their vision for transforming the energy system.</em></p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>How can bioscience research help the world reach its goal of reducing carbon emissions?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>For billions of years, biology has employed an approach to energy generation and the synthesis of materials and chemicals that meets the needs of organisms with minimal production of byproducts that are poisonous to the environment. Bioscience is tapping into this vast toolset to transform today’s carbon-centric energy systems by creating new structures, devices, and materials that are significantly less energy-intensive and less harmful to the environment than today’s dominant energy technologies.</p>
<p>What’s exciting is that, while it took biology 4 billion years of trial and error to develop its extraordinarily efficient systems, modern bioscience techniques enable researchers to conduct a billion experiments in a matter of months. As a result, the field of synthetic biology, which is only about 15 years old, has already produced startling results.</p>
<p>At MIT, researchers working on energy-related applications have successfully engineered microorganisms to make biofuel from an assortment of starting substrates and used viruses to build batteries, sensors, and more efficient solar cells.</p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>How will the new Center for Energy Bioscience Research identify and address the major challenges in this area?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>The center partners with a diverse set of private companies, government entities, and non-governmental organizations to ensure that MIT develops practical biological and biologically inspired energy solutions to a wide range of concerns — from developing&nbsp;cleaner fuel sources to enhancing storage options, and from fueling new transportation alternatives to cleaning up the environment.</p>
<p>Drawing upon MIT’s extensive existing research capability in synthetic biology, microbial metabolic engineering, new DNA technologies, and directed evolution, the center plans to rapidly screen, model, design, and synthesize new materials with biological fidelity to harness the power of biology to shape a low-carbon future.</p>
<p><strong>Q: </strong>What kind of research is currently under way at the center?</p>
<p><strong>A: </strong>One promising development is the biological generation of liquid fuels from natural gas. It has been estimated that the proven reserves of natural gas (methane) in the United States could sustain the transportation sector of this country for the next 50 years. However, methane’s low energy density makes it unsuitable for integration into current infrastructure.</p>
<p>MIT researchers are investigating biological processes for the low-cost conversion of methane to liquid fuel molecules with much higher energy density. For example, researchers have developed a novel bioprocess for converting syngas (obtainable from methane) or other waste gases containing carbon dioxide and a reducing gas such as hydrogen or carbon monoxide into biofuel. The process uses bacteria to convert waste gases into acetic acid — vinegar — which is subsequently converted to oil by an engineered yeast.</p>
<p>MIT researchers have also developed a virus that can improve solar cell efficiency by nearly one-third and demonstrated a technique that can&nbsp;significantly increase the photosynthetic activity of plants. Such increased activity could result in faster production of biomass for biofuel production, leading to faster capture and fixation of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.</p>
<p>On a broader scale, MIT researchers have recently developed a programming language for bacteria that makes it quicker and easier to create designer DNA for genetic parts such as sensors, memory switches, and biological clocks. Such parts can then be combined to modify existing cell functions and add new ones. This work promises to be useful in a wide range of energy applications, such as designing yeast that could ferment biomass into ethanol without toxic byproducts.</p>
<p><em>This article appears in the <a href="http://energy.mit.edu/energy-futures/spring-2017/" target="_blank">Spring 2017</a>&nbsp;issue of Energy Futures, the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative.</em></p>
Angela Belcher (left) and Kristala PratherPhoto: Kelley Travers/MIT Energy Initiative3 Questions, Faculty, MIT Energy Initiative, Biological engineering, Chemical engineering, DMSE, Materials Science and Engineering, Energy, Carbon, Sustainability, Oil and gas, School of Engineering, Emissions, Climate changeSummer interns&#039; lab work underwayhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-materials-science-and-engineering-summer-interns-lab-work-underway-0703
Summer Scholars in materials science and engineering are tackling projects ranging from magnetic thin films to catalysts for energy.
Mon, 03 Jul 2017 14:55:01 -0400Denis Paiste | Materials Processing Centerhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-materials-science-and-engineering-summer-interns-lab-work-underway-0703<p>The Summer Scholars in materials science and engineering have&nbsp;settled on their research projects and lab assignments. The interns, co-sponsored by the Materials Processing Center and the Center for Materials Science and Engineering, faced&nbsp;difficult decisions to choose&nbsp;labs after hearing enticing faculty presentations and taking lab tours.</p>
<p>Luke Soule found all the possible projects interesting, but has honed in on electrochemistry, choosing to work in Department of Materials Science and Engineering&nbsp;Professor&nbsp;Yang Shao-Horn’s&nbsp;<a href="http://web.mit.edu/eel/index.html" target="_blank">Electrochemical Energy Lab</a>&nbsp;(EEL). During a tour of the lab, graduate student Karthik Akkiraju presented several research projects on the role of catalysts in lowering the energy needed to stimulate electrochemical reactions in energy devices. Akkiraju says&nbsp;Shao-Horn looks for students who are excited about the work and encourages students to be independent and to work together as a community. He also emphasizes&nbsp;the family-like atmosphere of the group. “At EEL, you never work alone,” Akkiraju says.</p>
<p>Stephanie Bauman has chosen to work in Assistant Professor&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rle.mit.edu/spintronics/people/" target="_blank">Luqiao Liu</a>’s lab, after listening to electrical engineering and computer science graduate student Joseph T. Finley explain&nbsp;how he uses processes such as electron sputtering and ion milling to make magnetic thin films. The lab is developing new magnetically switchable materials for computer memory.&nbsp;“It seems to be mostly focused toward physics which is my major and more so than a lot of the other bio or chem projects,” Bauman says.</p>
<p>Alexandra Oliveira has chosen to work under&nbsp;<a href="https://cheme.mit.edu/profile/fikile-r-brushett/" target="_blank">Fikile R. Brushett</a>,&nbsp;the Raymond A. (1921)&nbsp;and Helen E. St. Laurent Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering,&nbsp;on redox flow batteries. ‘”Right now I’m working on the permeability of different microstructures for carbon electrodes and I’ll be attempting to electrograft molecules onto the electrodes to change their chemical properties for aqueous and non-aqueous flow batteries,” Oliveira says.</p>
<p>Summer Scholar Grace Noel is working in the lab of Charles and Hilda Roddey Career Development Professor in Chemical Engineering&nbsp;<a href="https://cheme.mit.edu/profile/william-a-tisdale/" target="_blank">William A. Tisdale</a>, on a project to make and study metal halide perovskite nanoplatelets. These platelets, which are like flat quantum dots, are sometimes just over one-half of a unit cell in thickness, and their color can be adjusted by altering their composition.</p>
<p>Ben&nbsp;Canty is involved in a project to develop a catalyst for breaking down lignins in plant biomass into industrially useful chemicals like benzene, working in the lab of associate professor of chemical engineering&nbsp;<a href="https://cheme.mit.edu/profile/yuriy-roman/" target="_blank">Yuriy Román</a>. “I’m mixing in stuff in a tiny little batch reactor, putting it on a heater on a shelf, watching it so it doesn’t explode, centrifuging it, and then running it on gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers,” Canty explains.</p>
<p><a dir="ltr" href="http://www.rle.mit.edu/nano" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">NanoStructures Laboratory</a>&nbsp;postdoc Reza Baghdadi&nbsp;impressed&nbsp;Summer Scholar Saleem Iqbal while explaining&nbsp;how Professor&nbsp;Karl Berggren aims to develop superconducting nanowires made of niobium nitride for reducing data processing energy consumption. In the Berggren lab, Iqbal is getting&nbsp;a chance to learn different fabrication skills, such as photolithography and electron beam lithography, and&nbsp;thin film deposition&nbsp;and etching processes, with optical and electrical studies at liquid helium temperatures of&nbsp;about 4.2 kelvins.</p>
<p>AIM Photonics Academy interns were matched separately to their projects. Stuart Daudlin is working on statistical modeling of photonic device variations&nbsp;with Duane Boning, the Clarence J. LeBel Professor of Electrical Engineering. Ryan Kosciolek is working on nonlinear photonic devices&nbsp;with Microphotonics Center Principal Research Scientist Anuradha Agarwal. Summer Scholars attend regular weekly or bi-weekly lab group meetings. Larger groups have dedicated subgroups as well that meet regularly.</p>
<p>The&nbsp;internships are supported in part by the National Science Foundation’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers program. Participants will present their results at a poster session the last week of the program, which runs from June 15&nbsp;to August 5.</p>
Chemical engineering postdoc Antoni Forner-Cuenca (far right) explains work in the Brushett Lab on advanced flow batteries for grid-level energy storage to 2017 MPC-CMSE Summer Scholars (l-r) Kaila Holloway, Gaetana Michelet, Alexandra Oliveira, Saleem Iqbal, and Alejandro Aponte-Lugo. Forner-Cuenca is holding carbon paper where battery reactions take place. Photo: Denis Paiste/Materials Processing CenterSchool of Engineering, Materials Processing Center, Materials Science and Engineering, National Science Foundation (NSF), Energy, Sustainability, Classes and programs, DMSE, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (eecs)Tiny “motors” are driven by lighthttps://news.mit.edu/2017/tiny-motors-driven-by-light-0630
Researchers demonstrate nanoscale particles that ordinary light sources can set spinning. Fri, 30 Jun 2017 13:59:59 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/tiny-motors-driven-by-light-0630<p>Science fiction is full of fanciful devices that allow light to interact forcefully with matter, from light sabers to photon-drive rockets. In recent years, science has begun to catch up; some results hint at interesting real-world interactions between light and matter at atomic scales, and researchers have produced devices such as optical tractor beams, tweezers, and vortex beams.</p>
<p>Now, a team at MIT and elsewhere has pushed through another boundary in the quest for such exotic contraptions, by creating in simulations the first system in which particles — &nbsp;ranging from roughly molecule- to bacteria-sized — can be manipulated by a beam of ordinary light rather than the expensive specialized light sources required by other systems. The findings are reported today in the journal Science Advances, by MIT postdocs Ognjen Ilic PhD ’15, Ido Kaminer, and Bo Zhen; professor of physics Marin Soljačić; and two others.</p>
<p>Most research that attempts to manipulate matter with light, whether by pushing away individual atoms or small particles, attracting them, or spinning them around, involves the use of sophisticated laser beams or other specialized equipment that severely limits the kinds of uses of such systems can be applied to. “Our approach is to look at whether we can get all these interesting mechanical effects, but with very simple light,” Ilic says.</p>
<p>The team decided to work on engineering the particles themselves, rather than the light beams, to get them to respond to ordinary light in particular ways. As their initial test, the researchers created simulated asymmetrical particles, called Janus (two-faced) particles, just a micrometer in diameter — one-hundredth the width of a human hair. These tiny spheres were composed of a silica core coated on side with a thin layer of gold.</p>
<p>When exposed to a beam of light, the two-sided configuration of these particles causes an interaction that shifts their axes of symmetry relative to the orientation of the beam, the researchers found. At the same time, this interaction creates forces that set the particles spinning uniformly. Multiple particles can all be affected at once by the same beam. And the rate of spin can be changed by just changing the color of the light.</p>
<p>The same kind of system, the researchers, say, could be applied to producing different kinds of manipulations, such as moving the positions of the particles. Ultimately, this new principle might be applied to moving particles around inside a body, using light to control their position and activity, for new medical treatments. It might also find uses in optically based nanomachinery.</p>
<p>About the growing number of approaches to controlling interactions between light and material objects, Kaminer says, “I think about this as a new tool in the arsenal, and a very significant one.”</p>
<p>Ilic says the study “enables dynamics that may not be achieved by the conventional approach of shaping the beam of light,” and could make possible a wide range of applications that are hard to foresee at this point. For example, in many potential applications, such as biological uses, nanoparticles may be moving in an incredibly complex, changing environment that would distort and scatter the beams needed for other kinds of particle manipulation. But these conditions would not matter to the simple light beams needed to activate the team’s asymmetric particles.</p>
<p>“Because our approach does not require shaping of the light field, a single beam of light can simultaneously actuate a large number of particles,” Ilic says. “Achieving this type of behavior would be of considerable interest to the community of scientists studying optical manipulation of nanoparticles and molecular machines.” Kaminer adds, “There’s an advantage in controlling large numbers of particles at once. It’s a unique opportunity we have here.”</p>
<p>Soljačić says this work fits into the area of topological physics, a burgeoning area of research that also led to last year’s Nobel Prize in physics. Most such work, though, has been focused on fairly specialized conditions that can exist in certain exotic materials called periodic media. “In contrast, our work investigates topological phenomena in particles,” he says.</p>
<p>And this is just the start, the team suggests. This initial set of simulations only addressed the effects with a very simple two-sided particle. “I think the most exciting thing for us,” Kaminer says, “is there’s an enormous field of opportunities here. With such a simple particle showing such complex dynamics,” he says, it’s hard to imagine what will be possible “with an enormous range of particles and shapes and structures we can explore.”</p>
<p>“Topology has been found to be a powerful tool in describing a select few physical systems,” says Mikael Rechtsman, an assistant professor of physics at Penn State who was not involved in this work. “Whenever a system can be described by a topological number, it is necessarily highly insensitive to imperfections that are present under realistic conditions. Soljačić's group has managed to find yet another important physical system in which this topological robustness can play a role, namely the control and manipulation of nanoparticles with light. Specifically, they have found that certain particles’ rotational states can be ‘topologically protected’ to be highly stable in the presence of a laser beam propagating through the system. This could potentially have importance for trapping and probing individual viruses and DNA, for example.”</p>
<p>The team also included Owen Miller at Yale University and Hrvoje Buljan at the University of Zagreb, in Croatia. The work was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office through the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, the National Science Foundation, and the European Research Council.&nbsp;</p>
Researchers have created in simulations the first system in which can be manipulated by a beam of ordinary light rather than the expensive specialized light sources required by other systems. Image: Christine Daniloff/MIT Research, School of Science, Physics, Energy, Light, Photonics, Nanoscience and nanotechnologyBolstering public support for state-level renewable energy policieshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/bolstering-public-support-for-state-level-renewable-energy-policies-0630
Analysis shows the design and framing of renewable energy policies can strengthen public support — or opposition.Fri, 30 Jun 2017 11:00:00 -0400Nancy W. Stauffer | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/bolstering-public-support-for-state-level-renewable-energy-policies-0630<p>Since the 1980s, the United States has often been a world leader in supporting renewable energy technologies at the state and federal level. Thirty-seven states have enacted binding or voluntary renewable portfolio standards (RPS) requiring that a portion of the electricity mix come from renewable sources by a given date. But since 2011, adoption of such standards has slowed, and in the past several years there have been many attempts — some of them successful — to weaken, freeze, or repeal renewable energy laws.</p>
<p>Given the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, increased federal investment in renewable energy is unlikely for the foreseeable future. As a result, state-level renewable energy policies will likely be central to driving new deployment. Past research has shown that public opinion plays a crucial role in facilitating a political consensus around new policies in U.S. states. If that’s true for renewable energy policies, then people’s views may have a major influence on future actions taken by their states.&nbsp;</p>
<p>For the past three years, MIT Associate Professor Christopher Warshaw of the Department of Political Science and Leah Stokes SM ’15, PhD ’15, now an assistant professor of political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, have been examining the interaction between public opinion and renewable energy policymaking. First, is there evidence that public opinion and energy policy align within a particular state? And second, what determines that public opinion? For example, can the design of a given RPS policy or how it’s presented to the public — that is, how it’s portrayed or framed — increase or decrease support for the policy?</p>
<p>Now, an analysis by Warshaw and Stokes finds that state legislators are, in fact, broadly responsive to public opinion in this policy arena. And based on data from a public opinion survey, the researchers offer practical advice on how to bolster public support for renewable policies. Their findings are <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2017107" target="_blank">published today</a> in the journal <em>Nature Energy.</em></p>
<p><strong>Public opinion and renewable energy policy, state by state&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>To begin investigating their questions, Warshaw and Stokes turned to data gathered by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a major survey supported by 56 universities, including MIT, that has its origins in a survey first funded by the MIT Energy Initiative a decade ago. In the 2014 cooperative survey, 56,200 people were asked whether they supported an RPS policy that “requires the use of a minimum amount of renewable fuels (wind, solar, and hydroelectric) in the generation of electricity, even if electricity prices increase a little.”</p>
<p>Using the 2014 survey data, Warshaw and Stokes explored the relationship between public opinion and policy on a state-by-state basis. Their analysis showed that in most states a majority of the public supports renewable energy requirements — although frequently by a narrow margin. In addition, public support within each state is strongly correlated with the RPS policy now in effect. Thirty-seven states plus the District of Columbia have RPS policies that are congruent with the views of a majority of their citizens, leaving only 13 that don’t. All 13 states where more than 60 percent of the public supports an RPS have a binding RPS policy, with varying levels of ambitiousness. As public support drops close to or below 50 percent, states are much less likely to have a binding RPS.</p>
<p>“Overall, these findings suggest that state legislators are broadly responsive to public opinion on this issue,” says Warshaw. “If public support for renewable energy policies increased, we could expect to see more renewable energy laws.”&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>A new experiment&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>In other areas of policymaking, research has shown that exactly how a policy is designed and presented can significantly impact whether the public supports or opposes it. Thus, it’s possible that certain details of RPS policies could be swaying public opinion. “We needed to gauge how the design and framing of renewable energy policies may affect people’s support for them across the states,” says Warshaw. He and Stokes set out to design a survey experiment that would give them insight into what drives people’s opinions of renewable energy policies.&nbsp;</p>
<p>They knew many factors could influence support for an RPS policy — from possible changes in electric bills to impacts on employment opportunities. A simple survey experiment might involve randomizing one such attribute at a time. For example, one group could be told that the new policy will increase residential electric bills, and the group’s response could then be compared to that of a control group that receives no information about added costs.&nbsp;</p>
<p>But the attributes of interest here are independent — they have no impact on one another — so the researchers could investigate all of them simultaneously. With this approach, the effects of the different attributes are all measured on the same scale. When the results are in, it’s easy to see which factors are most important and warrant special attention or concern.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In the new survey, all recipients received a central statement posing the possibility of the recipient’s state adopting a new RPS bill requiring that the state meet 35 percent of its electricity needs with renewable energy sources by the year 2025. Along with that&nbsp;description, they received a variety of additional statements about specific attributes of the bill, randomly distributed among the survey recipients. For each attribute, some (randomly selected) people received no added information, thereby serving as the control group in the experiment.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Warshaw and Stokes received replies from about 2,500 respondents. They then performed a statistical analysis on all the data to determine how much information on each of the attributes changed people’s views of the basic RPS policy from those of the control group.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Economic incentives — costs and jobs&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>The results show that an increase in residential energy costs&nbsp;has a far greater impact on the outcome than any of the other attributes. Adding $2 to an electricity bill decreased support for an RPS policy by about 6 percent, while a $10 increase decreased support by fully 13 percent. Those changes are large enough to flip majority public opinion within some states from supporting to opposing RPS policies. In the $2 case, 13 states shifted from supporting to opposing; in the $10 case, 33 states moved to the opposing side.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The possible impact on jobs is another big factor — one that can push support either way. Being told that the bill won’t create any jobs prompted 3.2 percent of respondents to oppose the bill. With that change, five states flipped from majority support to majority opposition. On the other hand, learning that the RPS policy will probably create several thousand jobs caused 7 percent of respondents to support the bill, a change that flipped eight states from majority opposition to majority support. “So if people think these policies will create a lot of jobs, public support increases enough to lead almost every state — except possibly the most conservative ones — to support RPS policies,” Stokes notes.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The results provide some interesting clues about what people believe now. For example, the response to added costs suggests that many people think renewables won’t — or shouldn’t — cost them anything extra. The prospect of a $2 increase in their electricity bill prompts a shift toward opposition. If people started out thinking renewable standards would cost them something, adding just $2 to the bill probably wouldn’t have elicited such a change.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The negative response to learning that the new policy will bring no extra jobs conveys a different message. “It may suggest that in the absence of any added information, people think the new bill will lead to a small increase in jobs — which frankly is generally&nbsp;about right,” says Warshaw. Once again, the experiment uncovered starting assumptions that people may have — perhaps without knowing it.</p>
<p><strong>Environmental impacts&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>Another reason to support using renewable energy may be the promise of environmental benefits. The survey tested that idea by telling some respondents that increasing renewable energy will reduce harmful air pollution in their state, including toxins such as mercury. Learning that air pollution will go down brings almost as large a response as learning that employment will go up: 6.7 percent of people move to the supporting side. “So emphasizing either job creation or air quality benefits could cause eight of the 10 states where a majority now opposes RPS bills — and where RPS policies largely do not exist — to flip to a majority in support,” says Stokes.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Interestingly, linking RPS policies to climate change had no impact on public support. The survey included various statements about the effects of RPS policies on greenhouse gas emissions and about whether or not supporters and opponents believe climate change to be a serious problem. While the added information increased support slightly, the change wasn’t large enough to be statistically significant.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Warshaw believes that the lack of impact isn’t because people don’t know or care about climate change. “I think it’s because they already have a pretty strong view on the connection between renewable energy policies and climate change,” he says. “Their view is already baked in, so you can’t frame the question in a way that triggers a change.”&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Partisan support&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>One more factor of interest is the role played by elites in U.S. political parties. Some research suggests that partisanship isn’t important for energy policy, even though it has been shown to influence public support in other policy domains. So the researchers added some partisan cues.&nbsp;</p>
<p>They found that when people were told that Democratic legislators support the RPS policy, public support increased by 2.4 percent, and three states flipped from majority opposition to majority support. When respondents were told that Republican legislators support it, public support increased by 5.5 percent, and seven states flip to majority support. Interestingly, the results show that if an elite affiliated with one political party supports the RPS policy, there is no statistically significant decrease in support by respondents affiliated with the other party.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Warshaw believes that support by partisan elites can have a big impact in part because people’s views on renewable energy “aren’t super-strongly formed,” he says. “On policies they don’t know much about, people look to their elected officials to tell them what the right thing to believe is. There’s considerable political science evidence that that’s true.”&nbsp;</p>
<p>Stokes notes that while none of the statements relating to climate change seemed to influence public opinion in the survey, in the absence of a coherent federal policy, state-level RPS policies may actually prove the most effective means of securing climate benefits. That prospect underscores the need for continuing public engagement during the decades-long process of weaning the U.S. energy system off fossil fuels.&nbsp;</p>
<p>This research was supported by the MIT Energy Initiative Seed Fund Program. While at MIT, Leah Stokes was a 2010-2011 Siemens-MIT Energy Fellow and a 2013-2014 Martin Family Sustainability Fellow. Logistical support was provided by the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab.</p>
New research finds certain aspects of how state-level renewable portfolio standards are designed and presented can set people’s minds for or against such policies — and that in this arena, public opinion does influence policymaking. For example, learning that a renewable energy policy will likely create several thousand jobs led to a significant increase in supporters of that policy.Photo: Skeeze/PixabayResearch, Energy, Political science, Environment, Emissions, Renewable energy, Policy, Government, Climate change, Behavioral economics, SHASS, MIT Energy InitiativeKit Cummins awarded the American Chemical Society Pauling Medalhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-chemistry-professor-kit-cummins-wins-acs-linus-pauling-medal-0628
Award presented annually in recognition of outstanding achievement in chemistry in the spirit of, and in honor of, Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling.Wed, 28 Jun 2017 16:25:01 -0400Danielle Randall | Department of Chemistryhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-chemistry-professor-kit-cummins-wins-acs-linus-pauling-medal-0628<p>Department of Chemistry Professor Christopher (Kit) Cummins&nbsp;has been honored with the 2017 Linus Pauling Medal, in recognition&nbsp;of his&nbsp;unparalleled synthetic and mechanistic studies of early-transition metal complexes, including reaction discovery and exploratory methods of development to improve nitrogen and phosphorous utilization. Cummins, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry, will be presented with the Pauling Medal at an award symposium this fall at Portland State University in Oregon.</p>
<p>"I was introduced to Pauling's hugely influential book 'The Nature of the Chemical Bond' as an undergraduate student at Cornell,&nbsp;where I had the incredible honor to meet Linus when he visited to reprise his Baker lectures from a half century earlier, out of which the book had grown," Cummins says. "It is like a dream come true for me to be selected to receive an award named for the human being who gave us so many of chemistry's central concepts. I will dedicate my award lecture to my fantastic students, past and present, for having embarked with me on a rich and still unfolding voyage of scientific discovery."</p>
<p>The Pauling Medal is sponsored jointly by the Portland, Puget Sound, and Oregon sections of the American Chemical Society. It is presented annually in recognition of outstanding achievement in chemistry in the spirit of, and in honor of, Linus Pauling, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1954 and the Nobel Prize for peace in 1962. Cummins joins several current members of the Department of Chemistry in being named a Linus Pauling Medal awardee, including&nbsp;Tim Swager&nbsp;(2016),&nbsp;Stephen Buchwald&nbsp;(2014), and&nbsp;Stephen Lippard&nbsp;(2009), as well as former department members Alexander Rich (1995) and John Waugh (1984).</p>
<p>Researchers in the Cummins Group are developing new methods of inorganic synthesis to address a variety of interesting questions. The activation of small molecules by transition-metal systems is a featured area, with ongoing work in the areas of synthetic nitrogen&nbsp;fixation, carbon dioxide&nbsp;reduction, and while phosphorus&nbsp;utilization. They are developing thermally activated molecular precursors to reactive small molecules or transient intermediates such as diphosphorus&nbsp;and phosphaethyne, molecules of astrophysical importance. Studies on supramolecular anion receptor host-guest chemistry inform their work on dioxygen&nbsp;electron transfer processes, which are germane to solar energy storage and approaches to improved metal-air battery technology. In addition, Cummins Group researchers work to develop new starting materials in phosphate chemistry, including acid forms that provide a starting point for synthesizing new phosphate-based materials with applications in next-generation battery technologies and catalysis. Experimental studies are supplemented with quantum chemical investigations for analysis of chemical bonding, reaction mechanisms, and property predictions.</p>
Professor Kit Cummins has been awarded the 2017 Linus Pauling Medal, which honors the spirit of the celebrated American chemist and two-time Nobel Prize winner.Photo: Justin KnightChemistry, Awards, honors and fellowships, Chemical engineering, Batteries, Faculty, Research, Energy, School of ScienceIberdrola and MIT Energy Initiative announce $10.3 million collaborationhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/iberdrola-mit-energy-initiative-announce-collaboration-0621
Funding will establish MIT professorship and support low-carbon energy and climate initiatives.Wed, 21 Jun 2017 17:00:01 -0400Emily Dahl | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/iberdrola-mit-energy-initiative-announce-collaboration-0621<p>Building on a shared commitment to driving innovation and education in energy and climate solutions, MIT President L. Rafael Reif and <a href="https://www.iberdrola.com/home">Iberdrola</a> Chairman and CEO Ignacio S. Galán met on MIT’s campus to renew and significantly expand the collaboration between the Institute and the global power company.</p>
<p>The $10.3 million, five-year collaboration aims to advance technologies and policies that contribute to the energy transition and the fight against climate change, supporting numerous efforts through the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and related MIT initiatives. &nbsp;</p>
<p>“Climate change and the policies created to address it have significant implications for businesses — it will fundamentally change products, services, and operating models,” says Galán. “Successful companies need to actively seek the opportunities a clean economy creates. Iberdrola constitutes a perfect example of the potential of the electricity sector. The company is a world leader in renewable energies, which represent almost 60 percent of Iberdrola’s mix, and we plan to reduce further our carbon dioxide emission intensity by at least 50 percent by 2030. MIT, one of the world's leading idea incubators, is the perfect research collaborator to deliver the technologies and solutions that will lead us toward a clean energy future.”</p>
<p>“Strong industry collaborations are critical to achieving MIT's vision for a clean energy future,” says Reif.&nbsp;“By pairing the excellence of MIT's researchers with Iberdrola's embrace of clean energy infrastructure, we have an exciting opportunity to make important contributions to address climate change.&nbsp;We look forward to working with our Iberdrola colleagues to identify critical solutions to this complex global challenge.”</p>
<p>Iberdrola will benefit from MIT’s advanced platform for research, development, and technological innovation, to educate the workforce needed to build and operate tomorrow’s energy systems. The company also aims to achieve a competitive advantage by systematically improving its business performance and anticipating future market trends. The agreement reinforces the three main objectives that shape Iberdrola’s program with academic institutions: knowledge transfer, talent attraction, and contribution to the company’s social dividend.</p>
<p>The agreement includes $5 million in funding to create the Iberdrola-AVANGRID professorship at MIT, dedicated to research and education in power systems engineering. Both MIT and Iberdrola recognize the urgent need to upgrade and modernize electricity infrastructure in the U.S. and globally, transforming power systems and creating the “utilities of the future.” To meet these challenges, industry and governments will need a new generation of young professionals ready to discover and implement innovative energy solutions. In addition to the professorship, Iberdrola is making a robust commitment to fund energy education opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students through MITEI. The agreement also includes training for Iberdrola Group employees as well as fellowships and internships at Iberdrola worldwide operating companies for MIT energy engineering students.</p>
<p>Iberdrola will become a sustaining member of MITEI, committing $5 million over five years to advance key technologies and policies for addressing climate change. As part of its MITEI membership, Iberdrola will join MITEI’s Low-Carbon Energy Center for Electric Power Systems, the mission of which is to enable the efficient evolution of the electric grid and the electric power sector. It is one of eight collaborative low-carbon energy research centers announced in 2015 as part of MIT’s Plan for Action on Climate Change, a vital component of which is to deepen engagement with industry, government, and the philanthropic community to develop climate solutions. The energy education commitment is also part of this sustaining membership. As another element of its membership, Iberdrola will contribute to MITEI’s Seed Fund to support early-stage energy research at MIT.</p>
<p>Through the agreement, Iberdrola will also expand its support of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and will conduct sponsored research through the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.</p>
<p>To support energy entrepreneurship, the company will provide $300,000 to the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program, which connects MIT undergraduate and graduate students with tailored educational experiences and mentoring, and provides them with funding to start up innovative projects or entrepreneurial initiatives.</p>
<p>This expanded collaboration follows Iberdrola’s multi-year sponsorship of MITEI’s <a href="http://energy.mit.edu/research/utility-future-study/">Utility of the Future study</a> and the corresponding report released in December 2016. The study — which MITEI conducted with Spain’s Institute for Research in Technology at Comillas Pontifical University (IIT-Comillas) — highlighted emerging trends in the electric power sector, where decarbonization, digitization, renewable energies and energy storage will continue to define the industry and determine a more flexible and efficient consumption of energy.</p>
MIT President L. Rafael Reif (left) and Iberdrola Chairman and CEO Ignacio S. GalánPhoto courtesy of Iberdrola MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), Climate, Climate change, Industry, Energy, Alternative energy, Renewable energy, Carbon Emissions, Solar, President L. Rafael Reif, CollaborationBatteries that “drink” seawater could power long-range underwater vehicleshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/batteries-drink-seawater-long-range-autonomous-underwater-vehicles-0615
Startup’s novel aluminum batteries increase the range of UUVs tenfold.Thu, 15 Jun 2017 11:00:00 -0400Rob Matheson | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/batteries-drink-seawater-long-range-autonomous-underwater-vehicles-0615<p>The long range of airborne drones helps them perform critical tasks in the skies. Now MIT spinout Open Water Power (OWP) aims to greatly improve the range of unpiloted underwater vehicles (UUVs), helping them better perform in a range of applications under the sea.</p>
<p>Recently acquired by major tech firm L3 Technologies, OWP has developed a novel aluminum-water power system that’s safer and more durable, and that gives UUVs a tenfold increase in range over traditional lithium-ion batteries used for the same applications.</p>
<p>The power systems could find a wide range of uses, including helping UUVs dive deeper, for longer periods of time, into the ocean’s abyss to explore ship wreckages, map the ocean floor, and conduct research. They could also be used for long-range oil prospecting out at sea and various military applications.</p>
<p>With the acquisition, OWP now aims to ramp up development of its power systems, not just for UUVs, but also for various ocean-floor monitoring systems, sonar buoy systems, and other marine-research devices.</p>
<p>OWP is currently working with the U.S. Navy to replace batteries in acoustic sensors designed to detect enemy submarines. This summer, the startup will launch a pilot with Riptide Autonomous Solutions, which will use the UUVs for underwater surveys. Currently, Riptide’s UUVs travel roughly 100 nautical miles in one go, but the company hopes OWP can increase that distance to 1,000 nautical miles.</p>
<p>“Everything people want to do underwater should get a lot easier,” says co-inventor <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2011/student-profile-mckay">Ian Salmon McKay</a> ’12, SM ’13, who co-founded OWP with fellow mechanical engineering graduate Thomas Milnes PhD ’13 and <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2015/student-profile-ruaridh-macdonald-0902">Ruaridh Macdonald</a> '12, SM '14, who will earn his PhD in nuclear engineering this year. “We’re off to conquer the oceans.”</p>
<p><strong>“Drinking” sea water for power</strong></p>
<p>Most UUVs use lithium-based batteries, which have several issues. They’re known to catch fire, for one thing, so UUV-sized batteries are generally not shippable by air. Also, their energy density is limited, meaning expensive service ships chaperone UUVs to sea, recharging the batteries as necessary. And the batteries need to be encased in expensive metal pressure vessels. In short, they’re rather short-lived and unsafe.</p>
<p>In contrast, OWP’s power system is safer, cheaper, and longer-lasting. It consists of a alloyed aluminum, a cathode alloyed with a combination of elements (primarily nickel), and an alkaline electrolyte that’s positioned between the electrodes.</p>
<p>When a UUV equipped with the power system is placed in the ocean, sea water is pulled into the battery, and is split at the cathode into hydroxide anions and hydrogen gas. The hydroxide anions interact with the aluminum anode, creating aluminum hydroxide and releasing electrons. Those electrons travel back toward the cathode, donating energy to a circuit along the way to begin the cycle anew. Both the aluminum hydroxide and hydrogen gas are jettisoned as harmless waste.</p>
<p>Components are only activated when flooded with water. Once the aluminum anode corrodes, it can be replaced at low cost.</p>
<p>Think of the power system as type of underwater engine, where water is the oxidizer feeding the chemical reactions, instead of the air used by car engines, McKay says. “Our power system can drink sea water and discard waste products,” he says. “But that exhaust is not harmful, compared to exhaust of terrestrial engines.”</p>
<p>With the aluminum-based power system, UUVs can launch from shore and don’t need service ships, opening up new opportunities and dropping costs. With oil prospecting, for example, UUVs currently used to explore the Gulf of Mexico need to hug the shores, covering only a few pipeline assets. OWP-powered UUVs could cover hundreds of miles and return before needing a new power system, covering all available pipeline assets.</p>
<p>Consider also the Malaysian Airlines crash in 2014, where UUVs were recruited to search areas that were infeasible for equipment on the other vessels, McKay says. “In looking for the debris, a sizeable amount of the power budget for missions like that is used descending to depth and ascending back to the surface, so their working time on the sea floor is very limited,” he says. “Our power system will improve on that.”</p>
<p><strong>Nailing the design</strong></p>
<p>The OWP technology started as the co-founders’ side project, which was modified throughout two MIT classes and a lab. In 2011, McKay joined 2.013/2.014 (Engineering System Design/Development) taught by MIT professor of mechanical engineering Douglas Hart, a seasoned hardware entrepreneur who co-founded <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2013/brontes-technologies-0821">Brontes Technologies</a> and Lantos Technologies. Milnes, who was previously a systems engineer at Brontes and co-founded <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2014/3-d-scanning-with-your-smartphone-0131">Viztu Technologies</a>, was Hart’s teaching assistant.</p>
<p>The class was charged with developing an alternate power source for UUVs. McKay gambled on an energy-dense but challenging element: aluminum. One major challenge with aluminum batteries is that certain chemical issues make it difficult to donate electrons to a circuit. Additionally, the product of the reactions, the aluminum hydroxide, sticks to the electrode’s surface, inhibiting further reaction. Continuing the work in 10.625 (Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage), taught by materials science Professor Yang Shao-Horn, the W. M. Keck Professor of Energy, McKay was able to overcome the first challenge by making a gallium-rich alloyed aluminum anode that successfully donated electrons, but it corroded very quickly.</p>
<p>Seeing potential in the battery, Milnes joined McKay in further developing the battery as a side project. The two briefly moved operations to the lab of Evelyn Wang, the Gail E. Kendall Professor of Mechanical Engineering. There, they began developing electrolytes and alloys that inhibit parasitic corrosion processes and prevent that aluminum hydroxide layer from forming on the anode.</p>
<p>Setting up shop at Greentown Labs in Somerville, Massachusetts, in 2013 — where the company still operates with about 10 employees — OWP further refined the power system’s design. Today, that power system uses a pump to circulate the electrolyte, scooping up unwanted aluminum hydroxide on the anode and dumping it onto a custom precipitation trap. When saturated, the traps with the waste are ejected and replaced automatically. The electrolyte prevents marine organisms from growing inside the power system.</p>
<p>Now OWP’s chief science officer, McKay says the startup owes much of its success to MIT’s atmosphere of innovation, where many of his professors readily offered technical and entrepreneurial advice and allowed him to work on extracurricular projects.</p>
<p>“It takes a village,” McKay says. “Those classes and that lab are where the idea took shape. People at MIT were doing strong science for science’s sake, but everyone was keenly aware of the possibility of bringing technologies to market. People were always having those great ‘What if?’ conversations — I probably had three to four different startup ideas in various stages of gestation at any given time, and so did all my friends. It was an environment that encouraged the playful exchange of ideas, and encouraged people to take on side projects with real prizes in mind.”</p>
Open Water Power’s battery that "drinks" in sea water to operate is safer and cheaper, and provides a tenfold increase in range, over traditional lithium-ion batteries used for unpiloted underwater vehicles. The power system consists of an alloyed aluminum anode, an alloyed cathode, and an alkaline electrolyte positioned between the electrodes. Components are only activated when flooded with water. Once the aluminum anode corrodes, it can be replaced at low cost.
Courtesy of Open Water PowerSchool of Engineering, Mechanical engineering, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E), Startups, Alumni/ae, Oceanography and ocean engineering, Drones, Autonomous vehicles, Security studies and military, Oil and gas, Batteries, Energy, Energy storageThomas McKrell, research scientist and mentor in nuclear science and engineering, dies at 47https://news.mit.edu/2017/thomas-mckrell-research-scientist-nuclear-science-and-engineering-mentor-dies-0613
Lauded director of the MIT Thermal Hydraulics and Materials in Extreme Environments Laboratory was a consummate experimentalist and passionate teacher.Tue, 13 Jun 2017 10:40:01 -0400Department of Nuclear Science and Engineeringhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/thomas-mckrell-research-scientist-nuclear-science-and-engineering-mentor-dies-0613<p>Thomas J. McKrell, a research scientist in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), passed away on June 9 at the age of 47.</p>
<p>An expert in materials behavior, especially corrosion of metallic alloys used in nuclear and conventional power plants, he came to MIT in 2006 after serving as a consultant in the power industry for more than a decade.</p>
<p>During his time at MIT, McKrell focused primarily on nuclear engineering, in particular, thermal-hydraulics. He became a technical leader in the area of heat transfer enhancement through the use of nanofluids, on which he organized sessions and gave invited lectures at domestic and international conferences.&nbsp;In 2011 he was appointed to the editorial board of the <em>Journal of Nanofluids</em>.</p>
<p>McKrell was a prolific contributor to a diverse range of other subjects, including the study of oxidation of accident-tolerant fuel (ATF) for nuclear reactors, the mitigation of tube fouling in geothermal power systems, and the probing of fundamental mechanisms in boiling heat transfer using advanced infra-red diagnostics. He also helped to advance the testing of cruciform rods for advanced nuclear power systems, the measurement of optical properties in molten salts for nuclear and solar applications, and the development of drag-reducing coatings for torpedoes.</p>
<p>“Tom was one of the best people and scientists I met at MIT,” says MIT research scientist Bren Phillips. “His personal commitment and dedication was focused not only on the results of the research, but also on the personal growth of the individual students working with him. His colleagues all saw him as essential, both in terms of his scientific knowledge and for his daily enthusiasm and effort.”</p>
<p>Notably, McKrell served as director of the Thermal Hydraulics and Materials in Extreme Environments Laboratory (known as the “Green Lab” to everyone in NSE), within the Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, from May 2006 onward. He led the transformation of the lab into a flexible multiuse tool, supporting up to eight different simultaneous experiments — all carefully maintained and orchestrated to be safe and efficient.</p>
<p>In addition to his research and leadership, McKrell was praised as a teacher and mentor of MIT students. He introduced dozens of graduate and undergraduate students to the challenges and joys of experimental work, offering advice on their experiments, including the design of new facilities, help with ordering parts, and interpretation of data.</p>
<p>One student said he always looked forward “to going to the lab to work because of the friendly, fun, exciting, cooperative, and safe culture he has fostered in the laboratory.” Another student commented on the ways that McKrell remained influential even to those he no longer directly mentored, saying, “Tom continues to provide me with personal and professional insight that nurtures my progress even though I no longer work under his cognizance. I have … known no other research scientist to be as important and involved in student progress as Tom.”</p>
<p>Such contributions did not go unnoticed by his colleagues in NSE, at MIT, and beyond. “Simply put, McKrell was an invaluable contributor to NSE’s successful experimental fission research program. His dedication helped advance NSE’s fission research and helped it to become the recognized program it is today,” says Jacopo Buongiorno, associate head of NSE.</p>
<p>In an <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2015/thomas-mckrell-nuclear-science-learning-teaching-0922">NSE profile about McKrel</a><a href="http://web.mit.edu/nse/news/spotlights/2015/mckrell.html">l</a> written in 2015, he admitted that while mentoring could often take over his days, he still found the time to explore his own research interests. As a child growing up in New Hampshire, McKrell said he noticed cars bellowing exhaust on the highway. “I could see the toll that people were having on the environment, and their disregard for nature. I always thought it would be great to make some sort of meaningful contribution, to have a huge positive impact on the environment in some way.” At MIT, he said, “I’ve been able to contribute to the clean energy sector more than that inquisitive child could have ever imagined.”</p>
<p>McKrell’s love of nature, which began during his childhood years living in a rural area, never subsided. In his adult years, McKrell carved out time for lingering in the woods near his home. “I like to sit quietly and wait for animals, like deer, to come and bed for the night,” he said. “I’ve always had that connection with the environment.”</p>
<p>McKrell is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and two children, Grace and John. A memorial service to celebrate his life will be held in the fall.</p>
Thomas McKrellPhoto: Susan YoungNuclear science and engineering, Obituaries, School of Engineering, Staff, Heat, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, EnergyLiquid tin-sulfur compound shows thermoelectric potentialhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/liquid-tin-sulfur-compound-shows-thermoelectric-potential-0612
MIT researchers create a high-temperature device that produces electricity from industrial waste heat.Mon, 12 Jun 2017 14:15:01 -0400Denis Paiste | Materials Processing Centerhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/liquid-tin-sulfur-compound-shows-thermoelectric-potential-0612<p>Glass and steel makers produce large amounts of wasted heat energy at high temperatures, but solid-state thermoelectric devices that convert heat to electricity either don’t operate at high enough temperatures or cost so much that their use is limited to special applications such as spacecraft. MIT researchers have developed a liquid thermoelectric device with a molten compound of tin and sulfur that can efficiently convert waste heat to electricity, opening the way to affordably transforming waste heat to power at high temperatures.</p>
<p>Youyang Zhao, a graduate student in assistant professor of metallurgy&nbsp;<a dir="ltr" href="https://dmse.mit.edu/faculty/profile/allanore" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Antoine Allanore</a>’s research group, built a thermoelectric test cell that operates in a liquid state at temperatures from 950 to 1,074 degrees Celsius (1,742 to 1,965 degrees Fahrenheit). Commercial thermoelectric devices, based on materials such as solid-state bismuth telluride, operate at about 500 C, and a block of bismuth telluride costs in the neighborhood of 150 times more than tin sulfide per cubic meter.</p>
<p>Once melted, tin sulfide provides a consistent thermoelectric output over a wide temperature range up to 200 degrees above its melting point of 882 C, says Zhao, first author of an&nbsp;<em>ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology</em>&nbsp;<a dir="ltr" href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1149/2.0031703jss" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">paper</a>, “Molten Semiconductors for High Temperature Thermoelectricity,” with Allanore and recent graduate Charles Cooper Rinzler PhD '17. Zhao found no significant performance drop as he cycled the device up to 1,074 C and back down to 950 C over several hours.</p>
<p>“For me, I first heat up the sample to its melting point and then scan the temperature up to 200 C above melting and then scan back while doing multiple measurements during the heating up and the cooling down part. What we found is the property is fairly consistent,” Zhao says.</p>
<p><strong>Materials for large-scale industrial operations</strong></p>
<p>Zhao’s thermoelectric device operates in conditions that are relevant to industrial applications, while the material he used, tin sulfide, is appealing from a cost perspective, Allanore says. Thermoelectric devices work by sandwiching together materials that produce an electric voltage when there is a temperature difference between their hot and cool sides. In reverse, they can be used as cooling devices turning an electric current into a temperature drop. Such devices are used, for example, to heat and cool seats in luxury car models and to power on-board electronics on spacecraft on long journeys (using a nuclear energy source and with specialty devices that can operate at higher temperatures than commercial devices).</p>
<p>The environmental benefits that producing electricity from waste heat yields are unlikely to be a primary motivator for glass and steel makers to adopt this technology, Allanore suggests. These operations have to run their vats or kilns at temperatures of 1,000 C or higher to make their products, and they make their profits off those products. But reaching this high heat is a one-time cost. If thermoelectric management of that heat allows producers to operate hotter, which could increase productivity, or to extend the life of their equipment, then they will be more likely to adapt it, Allanore says. “We already know that in the steady state we have 1,000 degrees Celsius at that location,” he says. And that’s enough to melt the semiconducting materials in a liquid thermoelectric device.</p>
<p>“At the beginning we thought about how do we implement at large scale, on high-temperature metallurgical furnaces, materials that could recover waste heat.&nbsp;That was our first idea. But then the second vision of this is to say, what can I do with that electricity? Because you’re not going to deploy that to make electricity, you’re going to deploy that because you have a true benefit to your production,” Allanore explains. Being able to manage heat at very high temperature thanks to electrically active materials like molten compounds is one benefit that is now a possibility.</p>
<p>These findings can have a large impact on metals producers who already handle hundreds of thousands of tons per year of copper sulfide, iron sulfide, and similar materials in their molten state, but who don’t currently take advantage of the materials’ semiconducting properties. “We know how to handle these things at very large scale,” Allanore says.</p>
<p>In 2013, Allanore and John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry&nbsp;Donald R. Sadoway developed an inexpensive alloy of chromium and iron to serve as the anode in producing steel through&nbsp;<a dir="ltr" href="http://news.mit.edu/2013/steel-without-greenhouse-gas-emissions-0508" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">molten oxide electrolysis</a>. The process produces metal of high purity and releases oxygen instead of carbon dioxide, which is a major contributor to the greenhouse gas effect. An MIT spinout company,&nbsp;<a dir="ltr" href="https://www.bostonelectromet.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Boston Electrometallurgical Corp.</a>, grew out of that work, which has demonstrated molten metal production at the scale of several hundreds pounds per day.</p>
<p><strong>Pairing theory and experiment</strong></p>
<p>The new work on thermoelectric devices under similarly high temperatures provides experimental confirmation of Allanore lab colleague Rinzler’s work explaining the theoretical basis for semiconducting behavior in metallic compounds in their hot, liquid state. Rinzler’s work lays out a&nbsp;<a dir="ltr" href="https://mpc-www.mit.edu/home-2/item/5984-predicting-high-temperature-liquid-electronic-properties" target="_blank">predictive framework</a>&nbsp;for quantifying the energy profile (thermodynamics), chemical structure (configuration of atoms), and electronic behavior in certain liquid semiconducting compounds, such as tin sulfide or copper sulfide.</p>
<p>“It’s not a simple matter of just saying what temperature range can you operate under? It’s what can you achieve under practical conditions of operation that matter for the application at hand and at what cost point of material and device,” Rinzler says.</p>
<p>“The beauty of something like this is we that can capture both, we can improve waste heat collection, which we may care about from an energy savings perspective, but industry is encouraged to use it because it actually benefits them in the context that they care about directly as well,” Rinzler says.</p>
<p>Measured on a dollar-per-watt basis, Allanore explains, molten tin sulfide devices could be important to industries that operate at high temperature. “The dollar per watt, when you have large surface area, is dictated by the cost of your material,” he says. Other advantages of the proposed system include the simplicity of handling tin and sulfur, the semiconducting mixture’s relatively high electrical conductivity and relatively low toxicity compared to compounds such as tellurium and thallium or lead and sulfur.</p>
<p>Zhao moved from concept to working device within a year, remarkable progress for scientific research, Allanore notes. “First, it’s Youyang, who is very good, and second it’s the liquid state ... that makes this type of fast demonstration possible,” he says. Zhao earned his BS in materials science and engineering from Georgia Tech in 2013.</p>
<p><strong>Self-healing system</strong></p>
<p>“The liquid state is very forgiving of large temperature changes in a way the solid-state is not. If you think about a solid-state material that is going through such a range of temperature, you always have thermal expansion, mechanical problems, corrosion,” Allanore&nbsp;says. These phenomena prevent many solid materials from being reversible in the sense that as the temperature goes up and down, the performance will remain the same. “This is again one of the features of the liquid state. We call it self-healing,” he explains. “As long as you don’t change the chemical composition macroscopically, you just get the same material. From an engineering standpoint and adoption for large-scale application, this is a very important feature.”</p>
<p>“I think people are afraid of it, in a sense, because it seems dangerous to be hot and molten, but once you are molten and know what you are doing, it’s very forgiving,” Allanore says.</p>
<p>For their experimental device, the researchers adapted a concentric cylinder design similar to one used by the late Robert K. Williams, a longtime metal and ceramic division researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, for a 1968&nbsp;<a dir="ltr" href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.1683593" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">study</a>&nbsp;of thermal conductivity in molten silver sulfide. “They proved convection is a really important factor in liquids,” Zhao says. “And for us, we are designing a device. We are not just talking about the properties of the material. We have to consider the cell geometry and design. When you put a novel material into a device, the overall property might be different from the material itself. So that means it is the overall liquid property, possibly with effect from convection, that dominates the performance of the device.”</p>
<p>Researchers compare different thermoelectric materials by determining their “figure of merit,” which is a measure of each material’s effectiveness at thermoelectric conversion. For many potentially useful compounds at high temperature, Allanore says, the thermoelectric figure of merit has never been investigated, so the new device also provides an experimental framework to evaluate this.</p>
<p><strong>Role of convection</strong></p>
<p>The thermoelectric figure of merit for a device is slightly different than that of the thermoelectric material it uses because of effects from natural convection as well as interference from the device itself. In the paper, Zhao says, “We reported the figure of merit of the device, not necessarily for the material, because we believe there is a contribution, or there is a performance degradation, from natural convection. In that sense, if we could minimize natural convection, the figure of merit for this device could go up.”</p>
<p>“That is the next step for our study,” Zhao says. “Currently I am trying to study what is the effect of natural convection on either [the] Seebeck coefficient [a measure of a material’s strength at converting heat to electricity] or electrical conductivity or thermal conductivity.”</p>
<p>The MIT researchers have filed a provisional patent application for certain aspects of their work.</p>
<p>“Allanore’s work is unique for its use of the liquid form of solid semiconductors to convert heat to electricity,” says <a dir="ltr" href="https://materials.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/michael-chabinyc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Michael Chabinyc</a>, University of California at Santa Barbara professor and associate chair in materials, who was not involved in this research. “The properties of liquid semiconductors have previously been studied, but his work translates this fundamental knowledge into a practical application. An important aspect of the work is the use of earth-abundant materials that provide a potential pathway to recover energy wasted as heat in an economical manner.”</p>
<p>Allanore hopes the work will broaden understanding of molten compounds. Unlike in solid materials where atoms are relatively fixed, he says, atoms in liquids vary in arrangement on a scale of several micrometers to several millimeters. One might think, for example, of the difference between the water molecules in a block of frozen ice versus those same molecules in a pot of boiling water. “In a molten material, you have constant movement, and it’s a complexity that it is not present in its solid state and is not described by existing models of the materials science we teach in class,” Allanore says. “We are comfortable that one day we will bridge the two and then it will be a full story that speaks not only about the electronic structure and property, but also what we call physical chemistry, which is viscosity, density, diffusivity — all these phenomena which are essentials to the liquid state.”</p>
<p>This work was supported by an MIT Energy Initiative Seed Fund grant and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.</p>
Left to right: Cooper Rinzler PhD '17, graduate student Youyang Zhao, and MIT Assistant Professor Antoine Allanore developed new formulas for predicting which molten compounds will be semiconducting and built a high-temperature thermoelectric device to produce electricity from molten semiconducting compounds that could reuse industrial waste heat. Photo: Denis Paiste/Materials Processing CenterResearch, Energy, Thermoelectricity, Metals, DMSE, Materials Science and Engineering, Materials Processing Center, School of EngineeringNew system allows optical “deep learning”https://news.mit.edu/2017/new-system-allows-optical-deep-learning-0612
Neural networks could be implemented more quickly using new photonic technology.Mon, 12 Jun 2017 12:04:13 -0400David Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/new-system-allows-optical-deep-learning-0612<p>“Deep learning” computer systems, based on artificial neural networks that mimic the way the brain learns from an accumulation of examples, have become a hot topic in computer science. In addition to enabling technologies such as face- and voice-recognition software, these systems could scour vast amounts of medical data to find patterns that could be useful diagnostically, or scan chemical formulas for possible new pharmaceuticals.</p>
<p>But the computations these systems must carry out are highly complex and demanding, even for the most powerful computers.</p>
<p>Now, a team of researchers at MIT and elsewhere has developed a new approach to such computations, using light instead of electricity, which they say could vastly improve the speed and efficiency of certain deep learning computations. Their results appear today in the journal <em>Nature Photonics </em>in a paper by MIT postdoc Yichen Shen, graduate student Nicholas Harris, professors Marin Soljačić and Dirk Englund, and eight others.</p>
<p>Soljačić says that many researchers over the years have made claims about optics-based computers, but that “people dramatically over-promised, and it backfired.” While many proposed uses of such photonic computers turned out not to be practical, a light-based neural-network system developed by this team “may be applicable for deep-learning for some applications,” he says.</p>
<p>Traditional computer architectures are not very efficient when it comes to the kinds of calculations needed for certain important neural-network tasks. Such tasks typically involve repeated multiplications of matrices, which can be very computationally intensive in conventional CPU or GPU chips.</p>
<p>After years of research, the MIT team has come up with a way of performing these operations optically instead. “This chip, once you tune it, can carry out matrix multiplication with, in principle, zero energy, almost instantly,” Soljačić says. “We’ve demonstrated the crucial building blocks but not yet the full system.”</p>
<p>By way of analogy, Soljačić points out that even an ordinary eyeglass lens carries out a complex calculation (the so-called Fourier transform) on the light waves that pass through it. The way light beams carry out computations in the new photonic chips is far more general but has a similar underlying principle. The new approach uses multiple light beams directed in such a way that their waves interact with each other, producing interference patterns that convey the result of the intended operation. The resulting device is something the researchers call a programmable nanophotonic processor.</p>
<p>The result, Shen says, is that the optical chips using this architecture could, in principle, carry out calculations performed in typical artificial intelligence algorithms much faster and using less than one-thousandth as much energy per operation as conventional electronic chips. “The natural advantage of using light to do matrix multiplication plays a big part in the speed up and power savings, because dense matrix multiplications are the most power hungry and time consuming part in AI algorithms” he says.</p>
<p>The new programmable nanophotonic processor, which was developed in the Englund lab by Harris and collaborators, uses an array of waveguides that are interconnected in a way that can be modified as needed, programming that set of beams for a specific computation. “You can program in any matrix operation,” Harris says. The processor guides light through a series of coupled photonic waveguides. The team’s full proposal calls for interleaved layers of devices that apply an operation called a nonlinear activation function, in analogy with the operation of neurons in the brain.</p>
<p>To demonstrate the concept, the team set the programmable nanophotonic processor to implement a neural network that recognizes four basic vowel sounds. Even with this rudimentary system, they were able to achieve a 77 percent accuracy level, compared to about 90 percent for conventional systems. There are “no substantial obstacles” to scaling up the system for greater accuracy, Soljačić says.</p>
<p>Englund adds that the programmable nanophotonic processor could have other applications as well, including signal processing for data transmission. “High-speed analog signal processing is something this could manage” faster than other approaches that first convert the signal to digital form, since light is an inherently analog medium. “This approach could do processing directly in the analog domain,” he says.</p>
<p>The team says it will still take a lot more effort and time to make this system useful; however, once the system is scaled up and fully functioning, it can find many user cases, such as data centers or security systems. The system could also be a boon for self-driving cars or drones, says Harris, or “whenever you need to do a lot of computation but you don’t have a lot of power or time.”</p>
<p>The research team also included MIT graduate students Scott Skirlo and Mihika Prabhu in the Research Laboratory of Electronics, Xin Sun in mathematics, and Shijie Zhao in biology, Tom Baehr-Jones and Michael Hochberg at Elenion Technologies, in New York, and Hugo Larochelle at Université de Sherbrooke, in Quebec. The work was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office through the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, the National Science Foundation, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.</p>
This futuristic drawing shows programmable nanophotonic processors integrated on a printed circuit board and carrying out deep learning computing.
Image: RedCube Inc., and courtesy of the researchersResearch, School of Science, Physics, Energy, Light, Photonics, Nanoscience and nanotechnology, National Science Foundation (NSF)Sustainability Connect 2017 brings MIT together to balance needs of the present and futurehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/sustainability-connect-brings-mit-together-to-balance-present-future-needs-0526
Third annual conference explores innovation, social justice, and the Institute as a living lab for sustainability. Fri, 26 May 2017 13:20:01 -0400Frankie Schembri | Office of Sustainabilityhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/sustainability-connect-brings-mit-together-to-balance-present-future-needs-0526<p>MIT faculty, staff, and students came together to celebrate the progress of the Institute’s campus sustainability efforts&nbsp;and to put their heads together to brainstorm ways MIT's&nbsp;unique culture of innovation can&nbsp;be further leveraged to test new&nbsp;ideas.</p>
<p>The diverse group gathered on May 8 for&nbsp;Sustainability Connect 2017, the third iteration of the annual conference sponsored by MIT’s&nbsp;Office of Sustainability (MITOS).</p>
<p>Over the past several years, MIT has&nbsp;used its power both as a research institution and living lab to tackle the issue of global climate change. In October 2015, MIT released a five-year <a href="http://climateaction.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Plan for Action on Climate Change</a>, setting goals like reducing campus emissions by at least 32 percent by 2030. In November 2015, the MIT Campus Sustainability Working Groups released their collective&nbsp;<a href="http://sustainability.mit.edu/sustainability-working-group-recommendations-2015" target="_blank">recommendations</a> for advancing sustainable design and construction, materials management, and green labs across campus.</p>
<p>“Two years ago, when we launched this event, we challenged ourselves to determine how MIT can be a game-changing force for sustainability in the 21st century,”&nbsp;MITOS director Julie Newman said in her opening remarks. “And I’m pleased to report that in this short period of time we’re at a place where we can point to the transformative efforts that MIT has made.”</p>
<p>It has been a busy year for sustainability at MIT. Newman noted several recent developments including <a href="http://mit.edu/facilities/transportation/accessmit/index.html" target="_blank">Access MIT</a>, a commuter benefits program for employees to encourage the use of public transportation;&nbsp;<a href="http://web.mit.edu/facilities/environmental/solar-ppa.html" target="_blank">Summit Farms</a>, MIT’s landmark solar energy power-purchase agreement with area partners; and the launch of <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2017/campus-energy-data-dashboard-0508" target="_blank">Energize MIT</a>, a digital platform through which MIT faculty, students, and staff can access data about campus energy use.</p>
<p>Deputy Executive Vice President Tony Sharon&nbsp;invited the audience to see new opportunities arising from the work already being done in sustainability and to maintain the momentum.</p>
<p>“We can reinvent the ways we build our buildings and shape our open spaces, rethink the ways we provide energy to the campus, and with the new data analytics in place, we have many opportunities for analysis, critique, and learning,” Sharon said.</p>
<p>Seeking new opportunities was a major focus&nbsp;of Sustainability Connect 2017.&nbsp;It was reflected in the conference’s theme: “Cultivating the Test Bed: Harvesting a Better Future for All,” and through the day’s agenda of panels, presentations, and brainstorming sessions. Opportunities for innovative thinking explored&nbsp;incorporating social justice in future solutions, new intersections of&nbsp;innovation and campus sustainability, and new venues&nbsp;for faculty, students, and staff to use the campus as a living lab.</p>
<p>Keynote speaker Julian Agyeman, a professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University, challenged the audience to incorporate social dimensions into their sustainability projects.</p>
<p>“It is very difficult to retrofit systems with equity and social justice once they are in place,” Agyeman said. “We need to think about these dimensions from the outset.”</p>
<p>Agyeman highlighted the unique opportunity of the MIT community to bring sustainable&nbsp;solutions to bear on cities with diverse populations like Boston and Cambridge, and called on the audience to prioritize both social justice and sustainability in their work.</p>
<p>The morning sessions served as a conversation forum for students, staff, and faculty directly involved with the task forces, committees, working groups, and research on sustainability at MIT. &nbsp;</p>
<p>The opening panel —&nbsp;“Exploring the Intersections between Innovation and Campus Sustainability at MIT” — touched on Institute’s history of innovation and&nbsp;current steps being taken by the administration to use this foundation for the next generation of sustainability projects.</p>
<p>Panelist Jim May, a senior project manager in MIT Campus Planning, explained how MIT’s architecture and campus spaces have always been ahead of their time and have served as a blueprint for university campuses around the world.</p>
<p>“We know that our research, science, and innovation are reflected in our architecture, and that our campus embodies what it is we want to do,” May said.</p>
<p>He said MIT has been rehearsing for the next paradigm shift in sustainable buildings, and is ready to again&nbsp;lead university campuses in taking the next steps.</p>
<p>Following the panel, participants conducted&nbsp;a workshop to explore what kinds of sustainability goals MIT might set in the future, on topics ranging from resilient buildings to smarter food systems.</p>
<p>“We are looking forward to working with campus leaders and the MIT community in the coming years to frame and define what goals will enable MIT to be a leader and exemplar of campus sustainability,” Newman said.</p>
<p>MITOS opened the afternoon sessions of Sustainability Connect to the greater MIT community this year, inviting students, staff and faculty from across departments to join the conversation on transforming the campus into a test bed and living lab for sustainability.</p>
<p>“This is the ‘muddy boots’ portion of the day,” said Joe Higgins, director of infrastructure business operations in the Department of Facilities.</p>
<p>Higgins moderated the afternoon panel:&nbsp;“Cultivating the Test Bed: Constructing the Campus Lab,” which featured the work of four researchers testing out sustainability solutions on campus.</p>
<p>“We’ve got a lot of ladder-climbers, hands-on wrench-turners, chemical-mixing folks here,” Higgins said “And the campus as test bed is a linking of these researchers with the operations staff at MIT.”</p>
<p>Panelists included Rachel Perlman, a PhD student in Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and MITOS Fellow who spoke about&nbsp;MIT’s material flow, and&nbsp;Kripa Varanasi, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, who discussed&nbsp;water savings in cooling towers located at MIT’s Central Utilities Plant. Other panelists were&nbsp;Marius Peters, a research scientist in the MIT Photovoltaics Research Lab who spoke about&nbsp;testing solar cells on campus,&nbsp;and Pamela Greenley, an associate director of MIT’s Office of Environment, Health and Safety who explored efforts to develop&nbsp;a green certification process for campus labs.</p>
<p>The day’s final ideation workshop was&nbsp;facilitated by MITOS staff and Amanda Graham of the <a href="https://environmentalsolutions.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Environmental Solutions Initiative</a>.&nbsp;Audience members worked together in small groups to match campus-based questions with opportunities for partnerships, experiential learning and new research.</p>
<p>“We know that every person who works, visits or studies at MIT, regardless of their role, might have a big idea to improve the sustainability of the campus,” said Paul J. Wolff III, living lab design and strategic engagement project manager at MITOS. “We want to capture these ideas – and where possible, connect them with the right partners, infuse them with robust research and test them right here on the MIT campus in an effort to maximize the outcomes.”</p>
<p>The interactive activities illustrated what makes living-lab-style&nbsp;sustainability&nbsp;research unique at MIT. They also&nbsp;provided participants with a roadmap for cultivating&nbsp;new ideas and strategic collaborations moving forward.</p>
Participants at Sustainability Connect 2017 engaged in a workshop to explore what kinds of sustainability goals MIT might set in the future, on topics ranging from resilient buildings to food systems.Photo: Ken Richardson PhotographySustainability, Special events and guest speakers, Climate change, Energy, Global Warming, Facilities, Emissions, Collaboration, Campus buildings and architecture, Cambridge, Boston and region, Alternative energy, ESIZach Hartwig: Applying diverse skills in pursuit of a fusion breakthroughhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-assistant-professor-zach-hartwig-applying-diverse-skills-in-pursuit-of-nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-0522
Newly-appointed Assistant Professor Zach Hartwig&#039;s mission is to use nuclear technology to benefit society and the environment.Mon, 22 May 2017 12:40:01 -0400Peter Dunn | Department of Nuclear Science and Engineeringhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-assistant-professor-zach-hartwig-applying-diverse-skills-in-pursuit-of-nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-0522<p>Making nuclear fusion a practical energy source is a complex challenge that will require diverse capabilities —&nbsp;like the scientific, engineering, communication, and leadership skills that Zach Hartwig has applied during almost a decade of doctoral and postdoc work at MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE).</p>
<p>Hartwig, who was recently named an NSE assistant professor, has helped develop a&nbsp;<a href="http://web.mit.edu/nse/news/spotlights/2013/hartwig.html" target="_blank">groundbreaking materials diagnostic system</a>&nbsp;for the Alcator C-Mod fusion reactor and led the establishment of a new ion accelerator lab. He&nbsp;has also&nbsp;<a href="http://web.mit.edu/nse/news/2014/delfavero.html" target="_blank">advocated for scientific research</a>&nbsp;before a variety of audiences, and, with a team of other postdocs, has proposed a promising&nbsp;<a href="http://www.psfc.mit.edu/news/2016/five-from-psfc-receive-infinite-mile-awards" target="_blank">new strategy for fusion energy development</a>.</p>
<p>All these efforts align with NSE’s ongoing mission of using nuclear technology to benefit society and the environment,&nbsp;he says.</p>
<p>“There’s a rising energy in the department today,” says Hartwig, who also holds a co-appointment at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) and an affiliation with the Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy. “A sense that, yes, we need to do research and train students, but also that it’s our responsibility to get beyond our walls and have a positive impact in the world.”</p>
<p>Hartwig’s current focus is the compelling prospect of applying new-generation, high-temperature superconducting magnet technology in fusion reactors while&nbsp;developing innovative technology and funding frameworks that can accelerate fusion’s deployment onto the electric grid. The strategy centers on a faster-better-cheaper approach to technology development and an aggressive pursuit of net energy gain from controlled fusion, and it is at the heart of new directions in fusion energy research at NSE and PSFC. It was developed by the PSFC team of Hartwig, Dan Brunner, Bob Mumgaard, and Brandon Sorbom.</p>
<p>Newly-available superconducting materials like REBCO (a single-crystal material composed of yttrium, barium, copper, oxygen and other elements) allow the creation of unprecedentedly-high-field magnets. They may&nbsp;enable smaller and less-expensive versions of venerable tokamak-type fusion reactors (like the Alcator C-Mod, which was shuttered last year), in part because a doubling of magnetic field strength produces a 16-fold increase in fusion power density. Hartwig says a fast-track high-field magnet development program, followed by the possible building of a compact, net-energy-gain tokamak in the next 5-10 years, would be a watershed in dispelling fusion’s reputation as being always in the future.</p>
<p>“If and when we do that, fusion will ramp exponentially, just as fission did,” Hartwig says. “But we need to hit it in, say, 2025 or 2030, not 2080, if fusion is going to help mitigate the worst effects of climate change. We believe high-field REBCO magnets enable us to do just that."</p>
<p>Private funding, driven by the huge commercial opportunities of a safe, carbon-free, always-on energy source, could complement government support of fusion energy sciences. Hartwig points to comparable efforts in space exploration, cancer and brain research, oceanography, and other fields. He adds that the high-field magnet approach to fusion is a good fit — a transformational breakthrough that’s well-matched to investors seeking high-impact solutions to global climate change.</p>
<p>“Much smaller reactors are cheaper and require less of an organization — they can be built by a university, and let us move faster and try more things,” he says. “And if it really doesn’t pan out, it’s better to find out quickly.”</p>
<p>In any event, competencies in superconducting magnets have broad applicability in sectors like energy storage, magnetic resonance imaging, and maglev transportation. Niobium-titanium low-temperature superconducting magnets are being used in the recently-commissioned Ionetix Superconducting Proton Cyclotron, the centerpiece of the ion accelerator lab that Hartwig created with NSE and PSFC graduate students Sorbom, Leigh Ann Kesler, and Steve Jepeal. Hartwig says he formed the seeds of his new lab&nbsp;even as a student and postdoc: “We did have a vision; there was an underutilized space and some pre-existing grants, and we poured in elbow grease.”</p>
<p>“It’s the first new cyclotron on campus in decades,” Hartwig says. “Accelerators are good scientific tools. They’re usually associated with high-energy physics, but they’re primarily an industrial tool for measuring and modifying materials properties.”</p>
<p>The new accelerator, which sits alongside three older systems, provides&nbsp;higher-energy particles, allowing investigation of previously inaccessible reactions and phenomena. Top priorities&nbsp;are&nbsp;nuclear security&nbsp;and development of systems that can quickly and safely detect nuclear materials in freight containers, but the lab is also making new connections between NSE faculty, students and staff.</p>
<p>“It’s centrally located, and brings together people from many different groups in the department,” Hartwig says. “There’s so much expertise, the accelerators have lots of possible applications, and we’re all tinkerers. I predicted four years ago that it would have visitors every day, and I was right — we should sell tickets.”</p>
<p>That outlook reflects Hartwig’s appreciation of collegial teamwork, and of the research community in and around NSE, which includes facilities like the PSFC, the fission-oriented Nuclear Reactor Laboratory, the Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, and laboratories for materials, corrosion, magnets, and quantum technology.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“That’s a lot of big facilities, and most don’t exist anywhere else,” he says. “Having all those capabilities at a university is probably unique in the world, and it creates a lot of opportunities, in fusion and other areas, for MIT to do what only MIT can do — put things together and be the fabric where innovation occurs.”</p>
Assistant Professor Zach Hartwig joined the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering faculty this year after almost a decade of doctoral and postdoc work at MIT.Photo: Lillie Paquette/MIT School of EngineeringPlasma Science and Fusion Center, Faculty, Research, Plasma, Fusion, Energy, Superconductors, Alternative energy, Global Warming, Nuclear power and reactors, Nuclear science and engineering, Profile, School of EngineeringDavid Carpenter: Purpose driven to the corehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-researcher-david-carpenter-uses-campus-nuclear-reactor-to-make-power-plants-safer-0519
Nuclear scientist David Carpenter found his calling at MIT&#039;s Nuclear Reactor Laboratory — improving the performance and safety of nuclear power plants.Fri, 19 May 2017 10:40:01 -0400Leda Zimmerman | Nuclear Reactor Labhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-researcher-david-carpenter-uses-campus-nuclear-reactor-to-make-power-plants-safer-0519<p>When he first reported to MIT’s Nuclear Reactor Laboratory (NRL) as an undergraduate in 2002, David Carpenter&nbsp;anticipated a challenging research opportunity. To his surprise, he found his calling.</p>
<p>It all began with a project investigating durable new materials for use in reactors.</p>
<p>“We were testing silicon carbide, which looked like a good possibility for an accident-tolerant fuel,” recalls Carpenter ’06, SM ’06, PhD ’10. “We were irradiating it inside the reactor — it was the first time anyone had ever done this — and I realized that when we pulled the material out, we would get to see something no one had ever seen before,” he says.</p>
<p>After 15 years at the NRL conducting research and&nbsp;earning degrees in nuclear science and engineering, Carpenter’s appetite for scientific discovery remains sharp, as does his commitment to improving both the performance and safety of current and next-generation nuclear reactors. Today, as the group leader for reactor experiments, he juggles projects brought to the facility by industry, government, and academic institutions. Throughout this time, he says he has never lost his appreciation for the NRL as a singular laboratory for scientific discovery.</p>
<p>“I see the reactor as a machine that generates radiation for testing, and when you put things inside, you can get knowledge out,” he says. “I also appreciate that I get to work each day with this machine and understand how really unique it is, and to some people, maybe a bit mysterious.”</p>
<p>It’s a job that also provides purpose.&nbsp;“I do have a sense of mission, an interest in pushing nuclear engineering to gain more acceptance, developing a real piece of technology for the future that can bring a carbon-free source of substantial energy,” he says.</p>
<p>The MIT Reactor (MITR) is a light-water cooled facility and&nbsp;one of the few on-campus reactors&nbsp;of its kind. It operates 24 hours per day, 7 days per&nbsp;week throughout the year,&nbsp;except for planned maintenance and refueling. While a highly-skilled staff operates and monitors the facility, Carpenter’s role means that he is always on call. “If anything happens to the experiment, or if there are any interruptions in reactor operations, I’ll be involved,” he says.</p>
<p>On a typical day, Carpenter tends to what he calls “the care and feeding of experiments” which take place in three separate research environments situated in the reactor core. All three&nbsp;rely on the MITR for a radiation environment, but each can be tuned to produce specific pressures and temperatures in gas, water or other media. The MITR serves as an ideal facility for developing and testing materials and instruments that can&nbsp;withstand the most extreme conditions and meet the challenges of nuclear reactor operations.</p>
<p>Among the projects Carpenter is shepherding are several with the potential to make critical impacts on the nuclear energy industry. One&nbsp;is the continuation of his silicon carbide research, which was the subject of both his master’s and PhD&nbsp;dissertations, and which triggered significant interest outside of academia.</p>
<p>Carpenter’s focus has involved deploying silicon carbide, a type of ceramic, as a first-line containment barrier in reactors. Since the 1950s, Carpenter explains, nuclear reactors have used uranium pellets stacked up in fuel rods made of zirconium alloys. “These rods are the first barrier against the release of radioactive material from the reactor, but as we’ve seen at the incidents at Fukushima and Three Mile Island, they can melt down in certain circumstances.”</p>
<p>In contrast, silicon carbide in a reactor “gets really hot and sits there and just takes it, without getting soft and melting,” Carpenter says. Using MITR, he has subjected the material to the kinds of temperatures, water pressures, and chemistries that might be found in a full-power&nbsp;reactor. “We’ve gone through many iterations in a process lasting over 15 years, with many tweaks along the way,” he says.</p>
<p>Carpenter believes this research has game-changing potential. “You could retrofit hundreds of existing reactors, making them much safer and more reliable overnight,” he says. But shifting to silicon carbide as an acceptable fuel cladding faces a number of challenges. Government and industry require a degree of certainty about new materials that necessitates more in-reactor testing.</p>
<p>“Silicon carbide remains a very promising material, and it’s sitting in our reactor even as we speak,” he says. But there are also concerns that some of the ceramic can dissolve in water and&nbsp;travel downstream, and that the material may not have the necessary level of “elastic forgiveness,” he says, tending to crack and shatter under stress.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, for Carpenter, this represents a fascinating engineering challenge. He imagines solutions that might involve weaving silicon fibers to achieve the required ductility, to enable a ceramic material to behave like a metal under some circumstances.</p>
<p>As he investigates these possibilities, Carpenter is also invested in novel work on behalf of clients. Among these is a multi-university project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a high-temperature, salt-cooled reactor. “The design is intrinsically safe because the fuel doesn’t melt, and the salt can withstand high temperatures without requiring thick, pressurized containment buildings,” he says. “You can generate more power, more efficiently, and salt-cooled reactors are inherently much safer,” he says.</p>
<p>The challenges to designing this new kind of reactor involve finding optimal construction materials, since super-hot&nbsp;radioactive salt is highly&nbsp;corrosive. Carpenter is tasked with figuring out how to configure the MITR to simulate a reactor operating at 700 degrees Celsius&nbsp;with molten salt. He must also contend with the radioactive tritium that is released when neutron radiation hits salt.</p>
<p>“Much of our work involves creating a special environment in the reactor,” he says. “Our job is to help clients figure out a practical way of answering the questions they’re posing.”</p>
<p>To perform his job, Carpenter must be a jack of all trades, whether using robot arms to manipulate&nbsp;projects in the reactor hot cells, or performing computational simulations. “I get to have a hand in pretty much everything, from plumbing, electrical work, and programming to conceptual design and installations,” he says.</p>
<p>This comes naturally to the former Eagle Scout from Atlanta who also enjoyed assembling scale models of Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise. He says&nbsp;a “bring a parent to school” event helped&nbsp;seed&nbsp;his interest in nuclear energy. “A parent who worked for a nuclear utility company brought plastic fuel pellets to our class, and told us that one actual nuclear pellet represented tons of coal and barrels of oil,” he recalls. “I took that pellet home and taped it to my wall, and the idea that nuclear energy could do that really stuck with me.”</p>
<p>When Carpenter arrived at MIT, a classmate easily nudged him toward pursuing nuclear science and engineering as a major. It was a short leap&nbsp;for Carpenter to seek out work at the campus reactor.</p>
<p>“I got involved in research I liked, and kept doing it, with different experiments blossoming into my undergraduate thesis, then my graduate thesis, and then it seemed natural to keep working in the same lab,” he says.</p>
<p>Though he never intended to stay this long, Carpenter says he is “really happy" with the work going on at the NRL. He says he is seeing a new wave of interest in nuclear technology research, and looks forward to cultivating students who bring the kind of commitment he felt when he first joined.</p>
<p>“It would be great to stay long enough to see the silicon carbide materials program grow from sketches on paper to being implemented in reactors,” he says. “I hope I’ll be around to see it.”</p>
“I do have a sense of mission, an interest in pushing nuclear engineering to gain more acceptance, developing a real piece of technology for the future that can bring a carbon-free source of substantial energy,” says MIT's David Carpenter.Photo: Susan YoungProfile, Nuclear power and reactors, Energy, Nuclear science and engineering, Staff, School of Engineering, Nuclear Reactor LabTackling air pollution in Chinahttps://news.mit.edu/2017/tackling-air-pollution-in-china-0517
Combining climate policy and vehicle emissions standards could pack a one-two punch.Wed, 17 May 2017 14:50:01 -0400Mark Dwortzan | MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Changehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/tackling-air-pollution-in-china-0517<p>A recent study <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0135749" target="_blank">estimates</a> that about 1.6 million people in China die each year — roughly 4,000 a day — from heart, lung, and stroke disorders due to poor air quality. Most of the nation’s lethal air pollution, including headline-grabbing toxins such as fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ground-level ozone (O<sub>3</sub>), is produced in its coal-dominated energy and industrial sectors. But a substantial and growing contributor to the problem is road transportation; as private vehicle ownership and freight traffic increase, so, too, do ambient concentrations of pollutants from gasoline and diesel fuel exhaust.</p>
<p>Concerned about ongoing health risks linked to high concentrations of air pollutants, China has recently taken measures that are expected to improve its air quality. These include an economy-wide climate policy that puts a price on carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) and lowers emissions that degrade air quality, and tailpipe and fuel-economy standards that target vehicle emissions only. What remains to be seen is how effective these measures will be in reducing China’s air pollution problem.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>Addressing that question head-on, a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2017.02.012" target="_blank">new study</a> in the journal <em>Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment </em>evaluates the combined impact on China’s air pollution levels of implementing both an economy-wide climate policy and vehicle emissions standards. Using an energy-economic model, a team of researchers from MIT, Tsinghua University, and Emory University finds that by 2030, these policies will act on different sectors in a coordinated fashion to address both climate change and air pollution. Implementation of China’s current vehicle emissions standards — or more stringent versions thereof — will considerably reduce road transportation’s contribution to the nation’s total air pollution, while an economy-wide price on CO<sub>2</sub> will significantly lower air pollution from other sectors of the economy through incentivizing a transition to less carbon-intensive energy sources such as natural gas and renewables.</p>
<p>“In any province, transportation produces at most a quarter of all emissions that cause air pollution in China,” says <a href="https://globalchange.mit.edu/about-us/personnel/kishimoto-paul" target="_blank">Paul Natsuo Kishimoto</a>, the paper’s lead author, a PhD candidate at the MIT Institute for Data, Systems and Society, and research assistant at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. “Improving fuel economy and emissions control technology on new vehicles and replacing old cars, trucks, and buses would sharply reduce the transportation sector’s share of the problem — but have no effect on the rest of the country’s air pollution emissions. On the other hand, a climate policy would impact not only that transport share but everything else. An economy-wide carbon price would help reduce carbon emissions throughout the country, but especially in non-transportation sectors where it’s far less expensive to cut emissions. Both approaches are necessary and complimentary.”</p>
<p>To examine the impact on China’s air pollution of combining these approaches — and the relative contributions of each to alleviating the problem — the researchers used models to project future economic activity, including transportation, and energy use associated with that activity, and calculated total emissions of health-compromising pollutants from transportation and other energy users. Using the China Regional Energy Model (<a href="https://globalchange.mit.edu/research/research-projects/china-energy-and-climate-project-cecp" target="_blank">C-REM</a>), a computable general equilibrium model developed by the China Energy and Climate Project (<a href="https://globalchange.mit.edu/node/14768" target="_blank">CECP</a>), along with a “fleet model” that distinguishes road vehicles by model year (an indicator of tailpipe and fuel economy performance), they simulated the interaction of road-transportation emissions standards and an economy-wide CO<sub>2</sub> price between the years 2010 and 2030.</p>
<p>To provide the sharpest estimates of how these policies would impact emissions across China, the simulations were implemented at the provincial level.</p>
<p>“Pollutants emitted in densely populated eastern provinces, or under different atmospheric conditions, will have different effects on air quality,” Kishimoto explains. “By modelling at the provincial level, we preserve these differences instead of rolling them into an unrepresentative national average.”</p>
<p>With an average annual increase of 7.5 percent in transportation energy demand over the simulation period, the researchers ran different scenarios representing various levels of stringency for vehicle emissions standards and climate policy, and found that existing emissions standards would reduce road transport emissions by more than 99 percent, but total emissions by roughly 15 percent or less, depending on the province. They also determined that more stringent emissions standards under consideration by the Chinese government would do little to achieve further reductions in total emissions. At the same time, they found that a more stringent climate policy could reduce up to 48 percent of total emissions by affecting the energy and industrial sectors, but make only a small dent in emissions from road transport.</p>
<p>Combining the two approaches would thus be a viable strategy to reduce air pollution from both transportation and non-transportation sources. Toward that end, the researchers recommend that China develop more robust mechanisms to enforce recently enacted vehicle emissions standards, and continue efforts aimed at setting a national price on carbon dioxide that covers most, if not all, sectors.</p>
<p>“It is very important that policymakers are aware of the interactions between air quality policies and climate change policies,” says <a href="https://globalchange.mit.edu/about-us/personnel/karplus-valerie" target="_blank">Valerie Karplus</a>, a co-author of the study who is an assistant professor of global economics and management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of the China Energy and Climate Project. “This information enables decision-makers to choose policies that reap co-benefits by reducing non-target pollutants — and do not work at cross purposes.”</p>
<p>Focused on energy and climate change governance in China, the CECP is an ongoing project that combines expertise from the MIT Joint Program and the Institute for Energy, Environment and Economy at Tsinghua University.</p>
Years of rapid urbanization, rising incomes, and transport investment focused on automobiles has led to a significant rise in traffic congestion in Beijing and other Chinese cities. An MIT study considers how effective new measures will be in reducing China’s air pollution. Photo: Li Lou/World BankResearch, Climate change, Transportation, Emissions, China, Climate, Environment, Energy, Economics, Policy, Government, Carbon dioxide, Ozone, Pollution, IDSS, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Sloan School of Management, School of EngineeringHigh-temperature devices made from films that bend as they “breathe”https://news.mit.edu/2017/high-temperature-mechanical-actuators-films-breathe-0508
Mechanical actuators developed by MIT team expand and contract as they let oxygen in and out.Mon, 08 May 2017 11:00:00 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/high-temperature-mechanical-actuators-films-breathe-0508<p>Carrying out maintenance tasks inside a nuclear plant puts severe strains on equipment, due to extreme temperatures that are hard for components to endure without degrading. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have come up with a radically new way to make actuators that could be used in such extremely hot environments.</p>
<p>The system relies on oxide materials similar to those used in many of today’s rechargeable batteries, in that ions move in and out of the material during charging and discharging cycles. Whether the ions are lithium ions, in the case of lithium ion batteries, or oxygen ions, in the case of the oxide materials, their reversible motion causes the material to expand and contract.</p>
<p>Such expansion and contraction can be a major issue affecting the usable lifetime of a battery or fuel cell, as the repeated changes in volume can cause cracks to form, potentially leading to short-circuits or degraded performance. But for high-temperature actuators, these volume changes are a desired result rather than an unwelcome side effect.</p>
<p>The findings are described in a report appearing this week in the journal <em>Nature Materials</em>, by Jessica Swallow, an MIT graduate student; Krystyn Van Vliet, the Michael (1949) and Sonja Koerner Professor of Materials Science and Engineering; Harry Tuller, professor of materials science and engineering; and five others.</p>
<p>“The most interesting thing about these materials is that they function at temperatures above 500 degrees Celsius,” Swallow explains. That suggests that their predictable bending motions could be harnessed, for example, for maintenance robotics inside a nuclear reactor, or actuators inside jet engines or spacecraft engines.</p>
<p>By coupling these oxide materials with other materials whose dimensions remain constant, it is possible to make actuators that bend when the oxide expands or contracts. This action is similar to the way bimetallic strips work in thermostats, where heating causes one metal to expand more than another that is bonded to it, leading the bonded strip to bend. For these tests, the researchers used a compound dubbed PCO, for praseodymium-doped cerium oxide.</p>
<p>Conventional materials used to create motion by applying electricity, such as piezoelectric devices, don’t work nearly as well at such high temperatures, so the new system could open up a new area of high-temperature sensors and actuators. Such devices could be used, for example, to open and close valves in these hot environments, the researchers say.</p>
<p>Van Vliet says the finding was made possible as a result of a high-resolution, probe-based mechanical measurement system for high-temperature conditions that she and her co-workers have developed over the years. The system provides “precision measurements of material motion that here relate directly to oxygen levels,” she says, enabling researchers to measure exactly how the oxygen is cycling in and out of the metal oxide.</p>
<p>To make these measurements, scientists begin by depositing a thin layer of metal oxide on a substrate, then use the detection system, which can measure small displacements on a scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter. “These materials are special,” she says, “because they ‘breathe’ oxygen in and out, and change volume, and that causes the substrate to bend.”</p>
<p>While they demonstrated the process using one particular oxide compound, the researchers say the findings could apply broadly to a variety of oxide materials, and even to other kinds of ions in addition to oxygen, moving in and out of the oxide layer.</p>
<p>These findings “are highly significant, since they demonstrate and explain the chemical expansion of thin films at high temperatures,” says Holger Fritze, a professor at the</p>
<p>Clausthal University of Technology in Germany, who was not involved in this work. “Such systems show large strain in comparison to other high-temperature stable materials, thereby enabling new applications including high-temperature actuators,” he says.</p>
<p>“The approach used here is very novel,” says Brian Sheldon, a professor of engineering at Brown University, who also was not involved in this research. “As the authors have pointed out, this approach can provide information that differs from that obtained with other methods that are employed to investigate chemical expansion.”</p>
<p>This work has two important features, Sheldon says: It provides important basic information about the chemical expansion of such materials, and it opens the possibility of new kinds of high-temperature actuators. “I think that both are very important accomplishments,” he says.</p>
<p>The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Science Small Research Grants Program and used shared facilities provided by the National Science Foundation’s MRSEC Program.</p>
“The most interesting thing about these materials is they function at temperatures above 500 degrees Celsius,” says MIT graduate student Jessica Swallow, pictured with the equipment used for testing the new materials.Courtesy of the researchersResearch, School of Engineering, DMSE, Materials Science and Engineering, Batteries, EnergyMIT opens its energy-use data to the community https://news.mit.edu/2017/campus-energy-data-dashboard-0508
Campus energy “dashboard” will provide detailed information to Institute’s faculty, staff, and students.Sun, 07 May 2017 23:59:59 -0400David L. Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/campus-energy-data-dashboard-0508<p>MIT has launched a new <a href="https://tableau.mit.edu/views/Energize_MIT/Energize_MIT">website</a> in beta form, making available a broad swath of detailed information about energy use and carbon emissions on campus. This rich resource is available to the Institute’s students, faculty, and staff, for education, research, and decision-making purposes. &nbsp;</p>
<p>The rollout of this central data “dashboard,” called Energize_MIT, is the latest in a series of steps implementing the goals and commitments set out in MIT’s 2015 <a href="https://climateaction.mit.edu/">Plan for Action on Climate Change</a>. The site offers a single web-based entry point to a centralized pool of data, which will improve collaboration across operational and departmental groups.</p>
<p>The site provides two kinds of information. First, a set of interactive graphic visualizations depicts information such as campus-wide and building-by-building details about use of electricity, natural gas, fuel oil, steam, and chilled water, as well as the greenhouse gas emissions associated with energy use. And second, datasets can be downloaded and used to drill down into details of energy use, including some as fine-grained as energy-use measurements in 15-minute increments.</p>
<p>Energize_MIT was developed as the first detailed campus sustainability data dashboard available to the MIT community, providing comprehensive information on energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, as called for in the climate action plan that President L. Rafael Reif and the senior officers released in October 2015. The plan called for the creation of “an open data platform for campus energy use,” in order “to provide faculty, staff, and students with a useful resource for research and intelligent decision-making.”</p>
<p>“Energize_MIT is an invaluable tool not just for helping us to better understand and manage campus energy use, but also for engaging the MIT community in finding ways to reduce our energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions,” says Maria T. Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research. “This is an important part of MIT’s climate action plan. I am grateful to the members of the Energize_MIT team for their hard work in bringing this platform online.”</p>
<p>The new platform is expected to grow and evolve over time, and users are encouraged to make suggestions for improvements, including the addition of new features or types of data, explains Derek Wietsma, a senior data analyst in MIT’s Office of Sustainability, who was part of the team that developed the new platform.</p>
<p>The data displayed through this system can be valuable for a wide variety of research projects but should also be useful in the day-to-day operations of the campus, Wietsma says. For example, the dashboard can help to identify buildings with the largest total and per-square-foot energy usage, and to examine energy trends over time as the Institute moves toward its carbon reduction goal.</p>
<p>The team that developed the website decided to provide two levels of information, to maximize its usefulness to a variety of potential users within the Institute. The site, which requires MIT certificates for access, provides the visualizations, including interactive graphics, charts, and campus maps, as a more “user friendly” introduction to the data, while the downloadable datasets provide the full raw data to enable students or researchers to create their own visualizations or carry out analysis. These datasets are also expected to be useful for classroom education projects.</p>
<p>Already, some faculty members are starting to use this data, for example to help test new ways of analyzing and modeling buildings’ energy use. This work represents one answer to the climate action plan’s call for ways to use the MIT campus as a “living laboratory” for energy and climate research.</p>
<p>“The new data hub is an excellent initiative,” says associate professor of architecture Christoph Reinhart, “that will empower groups from across MIT to better understand how our campus operates and to propose a plethora of interventions to make our lives more comfortable and productive as well as to enhance our buildings’ resource efficiency.”</p>
<p>Reinhart says he and his students are using the platform to develop and test their building energy models, as a way of helping owners of existing buildings to decide which kinds of changes and upgrades will produce the most effective reductions in carbon emissions.</p>
<p>Energy-use data in various categories will be available through the website on a building-by-building and month-by-month basis, and in some cases down to finer scales, depending on the kind of monitoring equipment available in a given building. Over time, more information will continue to be added, and the selection of datasets will largely be driven by community feedback and operational and research needs.</p>
<p>The new data hub “is a great tool to explore building energy data,” says Mark Mullins, senior energy efficiency engineer with the MIT Department of Facilities. “It allows me to understand building performance at the monthly, daily, and hourly level. I can compare performance of different buildings to help me identify ways to save energy, and evaluate performance over time after energy efficiency measures are installed.”</p>
<p>Improving building management and efficiency through data is an evolving trend on campus and industry-wide. As campus buildings become equipped with better data-producing instrumentation, Energize_MIT can help aggregate, synthesize, and provide that information to the students, researchers, and staff. &nbsp;</p>
<p>Over time, the website will expand to encompass not just the main campus but also nearby MIT-leased buildings and the solar plant in North Carolina that was built through an MIT-led power purchase agreement.</p>
<p>The site is intended as the first step of a much broader package of information and resources regarding MIT’s sustainability — including information on transportation, water, waste, and other kinds of data — that is to be launched later this year.</p>
<p>“The goal is to consolidate all these different datasets,” Wietsma says, “to provide a centralized point as a basis for understanding and analytics.”</p>
A new website, Energize_MIT, provides to the MIT community a broad swath of detailed information about energy use and carbon emissions on campus.
Courtesy of Energize_MITClimate change, Community, Sustainability, Administration, Environment, Energy, Alternative energy, Campus buildings and architecture, Technology and society, Emissions, FacilitiesMass. Department of Environmental Protection set to approve application for Central Utilities Plant upgradehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mass-department-environmental-protection-set-to-approve-central-utilities-plant-upgrade-0503
Public hearing scheduled for May 22.Wed, 03 May 2017 16:05:01 -0400Kristin Lund | MIT Facilitieshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mass-department-environmental-protection-set-to-approve-central-utilities-plant-upgrade-0503<p>In its efforts to upgrade the on-campus Central Utilities Plant (CUP), MIT has been advancing along a path of rigorous planning and meticulous permit applications. This summer, the Institute hopes to break ground on the project, based on the fact that one of the final permitting steps — approval from the Massachusetts Department of Environment Protection (MassDEP) — is near completion.</p>
<p>For more than 20 years, MIT has produced a portion of its own power on campus through cogeneration, a highly efficient combined heat and power process that generates electrical and thermal power simultaneously. The cogeneration facility in the CUP currently provides electricity, steam heat, and chilled water to more than 100 buildings on campus. However, the 21-megawatt gas turbine at the heart of the plant has been running since 1995 and is reaching the end of its useful life.</p>
<p>The upgrade project will replace the existing gas turbine with two new turbines, improving power reliability and overall cycle efficiency. Flexible in design and adaptable to change, the upgraded power system will serve as a bridge to the future, enabling MIT to incorporate new energy technologies, equipment, and other innovations as they emerge. The upgrade is one of the key components of MIT’s plan to reduce campus greenhouse gas emissions at least 32 percent by 2030.</p>
<p><strong>Permitting process</strong></p>
<p>To date, the CUP upgrade project has moved through the Massachusetts Department of Transportation permit process and the environmental review required by the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA), which required a public hearing and comment procedure. The current MassDEP process ensures that the upgraded plant will comply with state and federal air quality regulations, state noise policy, and federal Clean Air Act regulations.</p>
<p>Specifically, MIT has applied to MassDEP for the necessary approval and permit to operate two 22 megawatt (MW) gas turbines, each with an associated heat recovery steam generator equipped with duct firing capability, and one 2 MW emergency engine. In addition, MIT is seeking approval to change its fuel usage in five existing boilers, eliminating the use of No. 6 oil and shifting the entire CUP to cleaner fuels (natural gas as the primary fuel, and No. 2 fuel for emergency purposes only).</p>
<p>MassDEP has determined that the upgraded plant will comply with state and federal air quality regulations and state noise policy and has issued a proposed Comprehensive Plan Approval. In addition, MassDEP has issued a draft Prevention of Significant Deterioration permit, which states that the project complies with EPA New Source Review regulations (as part of the 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments).</p>
<p><strong>Public hearing scheduled for May 22</strong></p>
<p>Having proposed that the permit application be approved, MassDEP will hold a public hearing for the purpose of receiving public comments on the Proposed Plan Approval and Draft PSD Permit before issuing the Plan Approval and PSD Permit.</p>
<p>Public hearing:</p>
<p>Monday, May 22, 2017, 7 p.m.<br />
MIT <a href="http://whereis.mit.edu/?go=4" target="_blank">Room 4-270</a><br />
182 Memorial Drive (Rear)<br />
Cambridge, MA 02139</p>
<p>Testimony may be presented orally or in writing at this public hearing on May 22. Written comments will be accepted until 5 p.m. on May 23. Full details are available on the <a href="http://www.mass.gov/eea/agencies/massdep/air/approvals/mit.html" target="_blank">MassDEP website</a>.</p>
<p>Learn about the planned upgrades and permitting process on the <a href="http://powering.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Powering MIT website</a>.</p>
Conceptual sketch of the upgraded MIT Central Utilities Plant, as viewed from Portland StreetIllustration courtesy of Ellenzweig Architects.Facilities, Campus buildings and architecture, Energy, Sustainability, Climate change, Renewable energy, Emissions, Oil and gasMIT Energy Initiative awards 10 seed fund grants for early-stage energy researchhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-energy-initiative-awards-seed-fund-grants-for-early-stage-energy-research-0502
Tue, 02 May 2017 16:00:01 -0400Francesca McCaffrey | Nancy Stauffer | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-energy-initiative-awards-seed-fund-grants-for-early-stage-energy-research-0502<p>Supporting promising energy research across a wide range of disciplines is one of the core tenets of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI). Every spring for the past 10 years, the MITEI Seed Fund Program has awarded funding to a select group of early-stage energy research projects. This spring, 10 projects were awarded $150,000 each, for a total of $1.5 million.</p>
<p>“Providing support for basic research, especially research in its early stages, has proven to be an incredibly fruitful way of fostering creative interdisciplinary solutions to energy challenges,” says MITEI Director Robert Armstrong, the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering. “This year, we received 76 proposals from applicants with innovative ideas. It was one of the most competitive groups of proposals we’ve seen.”</p>
<p>To date, MITEI has supported 161 projects with grants totaling $21.4 million. These projects have covered the full spectrum of energy research areas, from fundamental physics and chemistry to policy and economics, and have drawn from all five MIT schools and 28 departments, labs, and centers (DLCs).</p>
<p>This year’s awardees represent three MIT schools (Science, Engineering, and the Sloan School of Management) and seven DLCs, with research specialties ranging from chemical engineering to management to aeronautics and astronautics. Five out of the 10 awarded projects focus on advancing energy storage technologies, a key area for enabling the transition to a low-carbon future.</p>
<p><strong>Moving forward on clean energy goals</strong></p>
<p>Valerie Karplus, the Class of 1943 Career Development Professor and assistant professor of global economics and management at MIT Sloan, has been awarded a grant for a project focusing on the response of industrial firms to energy-efficiency policies. Using detailed data from firms in China, Germany, and the United Kingdom, she will investigate what&nbsp;characteristics of firms&nbsp;determine&nbsp;how policy affects production costs and firm competitiveness. “We know very little about how policy interventions interact with an organization's structure and practices to ultimately influence energy use behaviors,” says Karplus. “This project will uncover how the quality of management in energy-intensive manufacturing companies affects the ease of meeting—and&nbsp;potentially&nbsp;exceeding—energy and environmental policy goals.”</p>
<p>Karplus’s fellow Seed Fund grantees are all working toward achieving these goals as well, in a variety of ways. Troy Van Voorhis, the Haslam and Dewey Professor of Chemistry, and Yogesh Surendranath, the Paul M. Cook Career Development Assistant Professor of Chemistry, are one such team. They were awarded a grant to support their development of new, more efficient graphene-based catalysts for fuel formation. If successful, their work could facilitate the clean generation of fuels capable of storing energy in chemical bonds for later release.</p>
<p><strong>Interdisciplinary research applies diverse skill sets to energy challenges</strong></p>
<p>Fikile Brushett, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, and Audun Botterud, a principal research scientist in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, are one of several teams leveraging interdisciplinary collaboration. By combining their expertise in battery technology and in power grid operations, Brushett and Botterud are developing new laboratory-scale methods of testing the performance and economic viability of grid-scale batteries under realistic operating conditions. “Implementation of application-informed methodologies can enable better evaluation of today’s technologies and can guide the development of next-generation battery systems for power grids with increasing shares of renewable energy,” says Botterud.</p>
<p>Another interdisciplinary project from this year’s round of grants focuses on developing novel computational tools that aid the design of new molecules. Based on first-principles modeling and data-driven models that leverage available literature, researchers Heather Kulik, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, and Youssef Marzouk, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics, are creating a novel approach that predicts the behavior of new molecules and updates predictions on the fly using recent advances in machine learning and uncertainty quantification. The goal is to use computer simulation rather than laboratory testing to guide the design of molecules optimized for selected uses. Their first tools focus on optimizing lubricant molecules critical to increasing vehicle fuel economy.</p>
<p><strong>Building on past successes</strong></p>
<p>A key goal of the MITEI Seed Fund Program is to provide support that will enable early-stage energy research projects to take root and thrive over the long term. Amos Winter, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, along with colleagues Ian Marius Peters, a research scientist in the Photovoltaics Research Laboratory, and Tonio Buonassisi, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, won a 2016 seed grant for a cost-optimized solar desalination system. The team has since received additional funding from Tata Projects, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, UNICEF, and USAID to further develop their technology, which has led to pilot plants in Chelluru, India, and in Gaza. The goal is to bring clean, energy-efficient, and cost-effective solutions to areas with a lack of clean drinking water. Tata Projects is planning to commercialize the technology.</p>
<p>A seed grant also led to follow-on funding for Noelle Selin, an associate professor in both the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), and Susan Solomon, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies in EAPS. Under a 2013 seed grant, they identified new ways to evaluate the success of emissions-control measures tailored to reduce particulate pollution. Selin and collaborators are continuing that work under a 2015 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.</p>
<p>In some cases, seed grants have catalyzed follow-on funding for different applications of the initial developments. For example, Laurent Demanet, an associate professor of applied mathematics, recently received funding from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research to support work he has been performing under a 2013 seed grant focused on improving methods of locating subsurface oil and gas reservoirs. In that work, he developed new mathematical techniques for creating maps of the subsurface from passive seismic surveys, where the only source of waves is the ambient seismic noise of the Earth. The Air Force is interested in this line of work because of the potential of the same mathematical techniques for passive aircraft navigation.</p>
<p>Spinoff companies have also emerged from seed grants. Cambridge Electronics, for instance, evolved from Tomás Palacios’s 2008 seed grant work on nitride-based electronics. “The MITEI seed funding for our gallium nitride power electronics project was key to getting that research effort started in our group,” says Palacios, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. “It allowed us to get some initial results that we then used to win further funding from other sponsors.” On graduating, the student leading the project — Bin Lu SM ’07 PhD ’13 — and colleagues started Cambridge Electronics, which Palacios says is “on track to make a real impact on energy use by changing the way electricity is processed in the world.”</p>
<p>Funding for Seed Fund grants comes chiefly from MITEI’s Founding and Sustaining Members, supplemented by gifts from generous donors. A full list of the 2017 awarded projects and teams is below.</p>
<ul>
<li>"3D printed ultrathin-wall cellular ceramic substrates for catalytic waste gas converters." Nicholas Fang, Department of Mechanical Engineering</li>
<li>"Can small, smart, swappable battery EVS outperform gas powertrain economics?" Sanjay Sarma, Department of Mechanical Engineering</li>
<li>"Computational design and synthesis of graphene based fuel forming catalysts." Troy Van Voorhis and Yogesh Surendranath, Department of Chemistry</li>
<li>"Designer electrocatalysts for energy conversion: Catalytic O<sub>2</sub> reduction, CO<sub>2</sub> reduction, and CH<sub>4</sub> activation with conductive metal-organic frameworks." Mircea Dinca, Department of Chemistry</li>
<li>"Electrokinetic suppression of viscous fingering in electrically enhanced oil recovery." Martin Bazant, Department of Chemical Engineering</li>
<li>"Management capabilities and firm responses to energy efficiency policies." Valerie Jean Karplus, Sloan School of Management</li>
<li>"Next generation quantitative structure property relationships for lubricants from machine learning and advanced simulation." Heather Kulik, Department of Chemical Engineering, and Youssef Marzouk, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics</li>
<li>"PMU data analytics platform for load model and oscillation source identification." Konstantin Turitsyn, Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Luca Daniel, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science</li>
<li>"Predicting technical performance and economic viability of grid-scale flow batteries." Audun Botterud, Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, and Fikile Brushett, Department of Chemical Engineering</li>
<li>"Thin-film metal-organic framework membranes for energy-efficient separations." Zachary Smith, Department of Chemical Engineering</li>
</ul>
Nicholas Fang, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, won an MITEI Seed Fund grant to continue his research into developing efficient ceramic support structures for catalytic converters used in power plants and in the automotive industry. This photo shows a piece of 3-D-printed cellular ceramic substrate with 100-nm-thin walls that has exhibited excellent thermal conductance and mechanical strength, with the potential for waste gas catalytic conversion.Photo: Huifeng Du and Xiang XiongGrants, Funding, MIT Energy Initiative, Faculty, Energy, Research, Chemical engineering, Mechanical engineering, Chemistry, Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), School of Engineering, School of Science, Sloan School of Management“IDEAS” to change the worldhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/ideas-global-challenge-awards-0502
MIT teams innovating in medical, education, environmental, and other fields split prizes totaling $95,000.Tue, 02 May 2017 09:30:00 -0400Rob Matheson | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/ideas-global-challenge-awards-0502<p>Ten MIT student teams developing innovations to improve the lives of people around the world split awards totaling $95,000 — including a top prize for an app that tackles the U.S. opioid epidemic —&nbsp;at the annual IDEAS Global Challenge showcase and awards ceremony.</p>
<p>Throughout Saturday afternoon, 40 teams showcased innovations in the MIT Media Lab in eight categories: water and sanitation, education and training, agriculture and food, health and medical, emergency and disaster relief, housing and transportation, energy and environment, mobile devices and communication, and finance and entrepreneurship.</p>
<p>Among the many innovative projects were drones that deliver disaster relief packages or capture images of villages for planning purposes; robotics and analytics technology that mines sewers for health data; a braille e-reader for the blind; novel solar-powered desalination technology; apps that track personal carbon emissions or help dairy farmers track milk production; and medical devices that analyze nutritional content of breast milk or simplify medication dosing for illiterate caregivers.</p>
<p>A team of judges, which included local investors and entrepreneurs, selected 10 winners to receive a top $15,000 award, five $10,000 awards, and four $7,500 awards.</p>
<p>The $15,000 prize went to <a href="https://ideasglobalchallenge.fluidreview.com/p/s/3408159/?&amp;q=&amp;g=">Hey, Charlie</a>, a team fighting the opioid-addiction epidemic in Massachusetts and across the nation with a behavioral modification app for people struggling with addiction.</p>
<p>Opioid-related deaths in Massachusetts quadrupled from 2000 to 2015; now at 25 deaths per 100,000 residents, they are more than double the national average, according to Massachusetts Health and Human Services. Nationally, opioid overdoses caused 33,000 deaths in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</p>
<p>Hey, Charlie, which started as a project for the MIT Hacking Medicine hackathon last year, passively collects data from smartphones to help&nbsp;people struggling with addiction connect more with supportive people and distance themselves from unhealthy relationships. If a person who may not be an effective source of support contacts the patient, for example, the app sends a text alert. It will also send an alert if the patient hasn’t talked to a positive influence in a while. The app also provides data to therapists or social workers if, say, the patient has engaged in a certain number of risky communications recently.</p>
<p>The aim is to change the social networks and behavior of people struggling with addiction. “Pretty much anyone you talk to has someone close to them [struggling] with addiction,” team member and app co-developer Emily Lindemer, a PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, told <em>MIT News</em>. “We have to look at [addiction] as a social disease that can’t be fixed simply with a pill.”</p>
<p>Using the money, the team will pilot the platform at the Boston Medical Center and start trials at treatment centers to scientifically validate patient outcomes. By providing funding and support to entrepreneurs at the crux of social change and health care, IDEAS provided the perfect commercial launch point for the team, Lindemer said: “The mission is so in line with what we want to do.”</p>
<p>IDEAS also provided a helpful development platform for the <a href="https://ideasglobalchallenge.fluidreview.com/p/s/3408379/?&amp;q=&amp;g=">Okoa Project</a>, which won a $10,000 award for engineering a custom ambulance cart that attaches to motorcycles in rural Tanzania, where ambulances are scarce but motorcycles are ubiquitous. The cart — a covered, two-wheeled trailer equipped with a stretcher — started as a D-Lab project but really took shape commercially while the team prepared for IDEAS, said team member Sade Nabahe, a mechanical engineering student.</p>
<p>“The most valuable thing we gained was the questions we had to answer in preparation for IDEAS: How do you plan on implementing it? What are your key challenges? Who are our customers?” Nabahe told <em>MIT News</em>, while a group of attendees examined the team’s prototype located nearby on the showcase floor. “It made us think more about the bigger picture.”</p>
<p>The eight other winners were: <a href="https://ideasglobalchallenge.fluidreview.com/p/s/3395225/?&amp;q=&amp;g=">Nesterly</a> ($7,500), <a href="https://ideasglobalchallenge.fluidreview.com/p/s/3313161/?&amp;q=&amp;g=">Joro</a> (the $7,500 Dow Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge Award), <a href="https://ideasglobalchallenge.fluidreview.com/p/s/3407819/?&amp;q=&amp;g=">Pukuni Community House</a> ($7,500), <a href="https://ideasglobalchallenge.fluidreview.com/p/s/3224133/?&amp;q=&amp;g=">Kumej</a> ($7,500), <a href="https://ideasglobalchallenge.fluidreview.com/p/s/3097745/?&amp;q=&amp;g=">Biobot Labs</a> ($10,000), <a href="https://ideasglobalchallenge.fluidreview.com/p/s/3096611/?&amp;q=&amp;g=">Need-a-Knee</a> ($10,000), <a href="https://ideasglobalchallenge.fluidreview.com/p/s/3407031/?&amp;q=&amp;g=">Drones For Humanity</a> ($10,000), and <a href="https://ideasglobalchallenge.fluidreview.com/p/s/3408519/?&amp;q=&amp;g=">MDaaS</a> ($10,000).</p>
<p>This year, more than 500 students participating in IDEAS attended dinners and other events, many sponsored the Bose Corporation, where they learned from past winners and entrepreneurial mentors, pitched ideas, and recruited team members. IDEAS also awarded 25 teams funding throughout the year to help them build prototypes.</p>
<p>Over its 16 years, IDEAS, organized annually by the Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Public Service Center, has awarded $850,000 to 140 teams that now reach more than 100,000 people in 44 countries. Winners have gone on to secure more than $42 million in additional funding. Some of last year’s winners have already taught 400 people to make bamboo bicycles in China, digitized artwork of more than 800 rural artists in Indonesia and India, and made online learning accessible for 4,000 students in Ghana.</p>
<p>Several past winners were on hand at the ceremony to present awards to newcomers and provide brief remarks about their startups’ progress and the long-lasting impact of IDEAS.</p>
<p>Harvard University graduate Jackie Stenson won a 2012 IDEAS prize with Essmart Global, an Indian technology-distribution startup she co-founded with MIT alumna Diana Jue Rajasingh ’09, SM ’12. Today, the startup has sold more than 25,000 products in the country. “The only reason we got started was IDEAS,” Stenson said. “This was our first validation and first real chunk of funding that basically told us, ‘You should get started.’”</p>
<p>About half of all winning IDEAS teams remain active in some way. But, even if teams disband, the positive influence of IDEAS stays with the members, said Brian Spatocco PhD ’15, who won an IDEAS prize in 2013 for GridForm, which developed software to optimize microgrid installations in rural India. The technology led to the construction of several microgrids in the country — which still service more than 1,000 people — before the startup broke up.</p>
<p>“We are no longer together, but the impact of IDEAS actually continues on in our team,” Spatocco said. One team member became a professor of social good at Carnegie Mellon University, while another stayed in India to build a new startup. Spatocco now works at an agriculture startup making fertilizer affordable throughout the world. “For us, the take-away has always been: It’s not just the idea, it’s always what [the IDEAS program] does to the people,” he said.</p>
<p>For Kate Trimble, senior director of the PKG Public Service Center, Spatocco’s story exemplifies a key mission of IDEAS —&nbsp;leaving a long-lasting impression on social entrepreneurs.</p>
<p>“The money is the topping on the sundae, for sure,” she said. “But the way this program is designed makes it a unique learning experience whether you win an award or don’t win an award. Preparing MIT students to change the world in positive ways is what IDEAS and the PKG Center are all about.”</p>
All winning teams of the annual IDEAS Global Challenge, held Saturday, April 29, in the MIT Media Lab. Photo: Dominick ReuterStudents, Student life, Contests and academic competitions, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E), Invention, D-Lab, Startups, Sustainability, Energy, Environment, Data, Medical devices, Public Service Center (PSC)A tax plan to stop climate changehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/bob-inglis-tax-plan-stop-climate-change-0428
At MIT, former Congressman Bob Inglis speaks about climate and free enterprise.Fri, 28 Apr 2017 15:50:01 -0400Environmental Solutions Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/bob-inglis-tax-plan-stop-climate-change-0428<p>Describing himself as an “energy optimist” and a “climate realist,”&nbsp;former U.S. Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC) told an MIT audience on Tuesday, April 25,&nbsp;that solutions to address climate change are within reach, but that support from conservatives will be indispensable to moving them forward.</p>
<p>“If there is going to be action, it is essential that conservatives join this,” said Inglis, the founder of <a href="http://www.republicen.org/" target="_blank">RepublicEn</a> and one of the country’s most prominent conservative advocates for climate action. “The way we do that is by talking to them in real free enterprise terms.”</p>
<p>During his lecture, the last of the year in the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative’s People and the Planet<em> </em>lecture series, Inglis made the case for a “tax swap”: implementing a tax on carbon while offsetting its revenues with a reduction in income or payroll taxes. This way, Inglis said, the U.S. can unleash a wave of clean energy innovation, driving down planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions without harming economic growth. And by making the tax border-adjustable —&nbsp;meaning that imports to the U.S. from countries without their own carbon tax would face an import tax —&nbsp;Inglis said his plan would catalyze the rest of the world to tax carbon as well.</p>
<p>Inglis, a commercial real estate lawyer, won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992 in his first run for office. He represented Greenville-Spartanburg from 1993 until 1998, when he unsuccessfully challenged then-U.S. Senator Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, a Democrat, for Hollings’ Senate seat. Inglis returned to the practice of commercial real estate law until 2004, the year he was again elected to the House.</p>
<p>It was during this second period in Congress that Inglis grew concerned about climate change. “I didn’t know anything about it except that Al Gore was for it, and that was the end of the inquiry for me,” said Inglis. But that began to change when the oldest of his five children, his son, told him before his 2004 election, “‘Dad, I’ll vote for you, but you’re going to clean up your act on the environment,’” Inglis recalled.</p>
<p>Inglis’ transformation on the issue continued when, as a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, he traveled to parts of the world where the signature of climate change is imprinted indelibly, including Antarctica, where he learned about the climate record contained in ice cores, and the Great Barrier Reef. Inglis began to advocate for free market solutions to climate change, penning an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/opinion/28inglis.html" target="_blank">op-ed</a> for <em>The New York Times</em> in 2008 in which he proposed a tax swap.</p>
<p>But while Inglis became convinced that climate change was a problem in need of action, constituents in his deeply conservative district saw things differently. It was partly because of climate change, Inglis said, that despite his rating of 93 (out of 100) from the American Conservative Union, he lost his primary campaign in 2010 to a Tea Party challenger swept into office on a national wave of voter unrest amidst the Great Recession.</p>
<p>After his defeat, Inglis became a full-time advocate for harnessing free enterprise to address climate change. In 2012, he launched the Energy and Enterprise Initiative —&nbsp;better known as RepublicEn —&nbsp;a nonprofit based at George Mason University centered on conservative principles. Inglis won the 2015 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his work on climate change.</p>
<p>Among other Republican leaders making the case for a carbon tax is former Secretary of State George Shultz PhD ’49, who chairs the external advisory board of the MIT Energy Initiative. Shultz is part of the <a href="https://www.clcouncil.org/" target="_blank">Climate Leadership Council</a>, which called earlier this year for a carbon tax whose revenues would be returned to U.S. families through dividends.</p>
<p>Pricing carbon is an idea with widespread support throughout the MIT community, noted John E. Fernández,&nbsp;director of the Environmental Solutions Initiative. In 2016, MIT <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2016/mit-joins-carbon-pricing-leadership-coalition-world-bank-imf-0520" target="_blank">joined</a> the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, a group of governments, companies, and nonprofits working to advance carbon pricing globally.</p>
<p>“Bob describes himself as an energy optimist and climate realist,” said Fernández. “That combination is important because there is much to be optimistic about when it comes to our energy present and future, but it’s also clear we need to redouble our efforts in finding realistic pathways toward real solutions for the climate.”</p>
<p>ESI’s People and the Planet Lecture Series aims to present individuals and organizations working to advance understanding and action toward a humane and sustainable future. Inglis’ visit to MIT was co-hosted by the MIT Energy Initiative and the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.</p>
Former Congressman Bob Inglis speaks at MIT on April 25.Photo: Casey AtkinsSpecial events and guest speakers, Climate change, ESI, Emissions, Policy, Energy, Economics, Global Warming, Government, Greenhouse gases, International relations, Environment, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Sustainability, MIT Energy Initiative, Carbon, TaxesWireless power could enable ingestible electronicshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/wireless-power-ingestible-electronics-0427
Small sensors or drug delivery devices could reside in the GI tract indefinitely.Thu, 27 Apr 2017 05:00:00 -0400Anne Trafton | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/wireless-power-ingestible-electronics-0427<p>Researchers at MIT, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory have devised a way to wirelessly power small electronic devices that can linger in the digestive tract indefinitely after being swallowed. Such devices could be used to sense conditions in the gastrointestinal tract, or carry small reservoirs of drugs to be delivered over an extended period.</p>
<p>Finding a safe and efficient power source is a critical step in the development of such ingestible electronic devices, says Giovanni Traverso, a research affiliate at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and a gastroenterologist and biomedical engineer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.</p>
<p>“If we’re proposing to have systems reside in the body for a long time, power becomes crucial,” says Traverso, one of the senior authors of the study. “Having the ability to transmit power wirelessly opens up new possibilities as we start to approach this problem.”</p>
<p>The new strategy, described in the April 27 issue of the journal <em>Scientific Reports</em>, is based on the wireless transfer of power from an antenna outside the body to another one inside the digestive tract. This method yields enough power to run sensors that could monitor heart rate, temperature, or levels of particular nutrients or gases in the stomach.</p>
<p>“Right now we have no way of measuring things like core body temperature or concentration of micronutrients over an extended period of time, and with these devices you could start to do that kind of thing,” says Abubakar Abid, a former MIT graduate student who is the paper’s first author.</p>
<p>Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, is also a senior author of the paper. Other authors are Koch Institute technical associates Taylor Bensel and Cody Cleveland, former Koch Institute research technician Lucas Booth, and Draper researchers Brian Smith and Jonathan O’Brien.</p>
<p><strong>Wireless transmission</strong></p>
<p>The research team has been working for several years on different types of ingestible electronics, including sensors that can <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2015/ingestible-sensor-measures-heart-breathing-rates-1118">monitor vital signs</a>, and <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2016/new-capsule-long-term-drug-delivery-malaria-1116">drug delivery vehicles</a> that can remain in the digestive tract for weeks or months. To power these devices, the team has been exploring various options, including a <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2017/engineers-harness-stomach-acid-power-tiny-sensors-0206">galvanic cell</a> that is powered by interactions with the acid of the stomach.</p>
<p>However, one drawback to using this type of battery cell is that the metal electrodes stop working over time. In their latest study, the team wanted to come up with a way to power their devices without using electrodes, allowing them to remain in the GI tract indefinitely.</p>
<p>The researchers first considered the possibility of using near-field transmission, that is, wireless energy transfer between two antennas over very small distances. This approach is now used for some cell phone chargers, but because the antennas have to be very close together, the researchers realized it would not work for transferring power over the distances they needed — about 5 to 10 centimeters.</p>
<p>Instead, they decided to explore midfield transmission, which can transfer power across longer distances. Researchers at Stanford University have recently explored using this strategy to power pacemakers, but no one had tried using it for devices in the digestive tract.</p>
<p>Using this approach, the researchers were able to deliver 100 to 200 microwatts of power to their device, which is more than enough to power small electronics, Abid says. A temperature sensor that wirelessly transmits a temperature reading every 10 seconds would require about 30 microwatts, as would a video camera that takes 10 to 20 frames per second.</p>
<p>In a study conducted in pigs, the external antenna was able to transfer power over distances ranging from 2 to 10 centimeters, and the researchers found that the energy transfer caused no tissue damage.</p>
<p>“We’re able to efficiently send power from the transmitter antennas outside the body to antennas inside the body, and do it in a way that minimizes the radiation being absorbed by the tissue itself,” Abid says.</p>
<p>Christopher Bettinger, an associate professor of materials science and biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, describes the study as a “great advancement” in the rapidly growing field of ingestible electronics.</p>
<p>“This is a classic problem with implantable devices: How do you power them? What they’re doing with wireless power is a very nice approach,” says Bettinger, who was not involved in the research.</p>
<p><strong>An alternative to batteries</strong></p>
<p>For this study, the researchers used square antennas with 6.8-millimeter sides. The internal antenna has to be small enough that it can be swallowed, but the external antenna can be larger, which offers the possibility of generating larger amounts of energy. The external power source could be used either to continuously power the internal device or to charge it up, Traverso says.</p>
<p>“It’s really a proof-of-concept in establishing an alternative to batteries for the powering of devices in the GI tract,” he says.</p>
<p>“This work, combined with exciting advancements in subthreshold electronics, low-power systems-on-a-chip, and novel packaging miniaturization, can enable many sensing, monitoring, and even stimulation or actuation applications,” Smith says.</p>
<p>The researchers are continuing to explore different ways to power devices in the GI tract, and they hope that some of their devices will be ready for human testing within about five years.</p>
<p>“We’re developing a whole series of other devices that can stay in the stomach for a long time, and looking at different timescales of how long we want to keep them in,” Traverso says. “I suspect that depending on the different applications, some methods of powering them may be better suited than others.”</p>
<p>The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and by a Draper Fellowship.</p>
Research, Energy, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (eecs), Chemical engineering, Koch Institute, School of Engineering, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Drug delivery, electronics, WirelessSolstice wins MIT Clean Energy Prize with efficient metering for developing nationshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/solstice-wins-mit-clean-energy-prize-efficient-metering-developing-nations-0425
Technology will give Nigerian households greater control over energy consumption.Tue, 25 Apr 2017 16:00:02 -0400Kara Baskin | MIT Sloan School of Managementhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/solstice-wins-mit-clean-energy-prize-efficient-metering-developing-nations-0425<p>Solstice Energy Solutions won the&nbsp;<a href="http://cep.mit.edu/" target="_blank">MIT Clean Energy Prize</a>&nbsp;April 14 for its plan to bring an energy-metering program to Nigerian households, which currently rely on manually operated diesel generators when the country’s power grid fails. Co-founder Ugwem Eneyo grew up in Nigeria, and the cause is personal.</p>
<p>“As a middle child, I remember having to go to my backyard to turn on a generator multiple times a day,” she told the panel. “I remember the sound of those generators whirring.”</p>
<p>To avoid this inconvenience, many households prefer to simply let generators run, with little grasp of the end cost or resulting pollution. Many households spend up to $3,000 each month, Eneyo said.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.trysolstice.com/" target="_blank">Solstice</a>, founded at Stanford University, plans to sell Shyft, a smart meter and transfer switch hybrid that allows users to meter, monitor, and control their power sources from a mobile app. Shyft would replace the manual changeover switches used by so many households. Unlike their competitors, the product isn’t simply an automatic transfer switch, which automatically clicks on when the grid fails. Instead, users can choose when to start up their generator, so they can reduce costs wherever possible. Eneyo estimates that users will decrease their energy costs by up to 30 percent.</p>
<p>“Think of it as a Fitbit for energy consumption,” she said.</p>
<p>Eneyo and her team will use the $100,000 prize money to launch a beta phase and begin selling the product next year.</p>
<p>MIT's Infinite Cooling won $60,000 for its plan to reduce water consumption at power plants, which are the largest consumers of freshwater in the United States. The startup aims to use electric fields to capture and reintroduce water to power plant cooling systems, thereby conserving and reducing power companies’ water costs.</p>
<p>Two remaining finalists were awarded $20,000 apiece. Joro, with a team of students from Harvard University and MIT, is a technology platform that enables users to track their carbon impact in real time through their smartphones, making choices to save money and reduce emissions. The startup aims to create an incentive-driven social network of like-minded users who can measure their output against friends. Flux Technologies, based at the University of California at Berkeley, focuses on efficient hydrogen and natural gas purification using advanced composite membranes.</p>
<p>The four finalists were culled from 17 semifinalists. In its 10th year, the MIT Clean Energy Prize is the nation’s oldest and largest clean energy entrepreneurship competition.</p>
<p>Judges included National Grid’s Kristian Bodek, GE Ventures’ Daniel Hullah, MassCEC’s Stephen Pike, The Engine’s Katie Rae, and Greentown Labs' Emily Reichert. The event was held at the MIT Media Lab.</p>
Solstice Energy Solutions co-founders Ugwem Eneyo (left) and Cole Stites-Clayton (center) stand with Kristian Bodek of National Grid.Photo: Nadia BoukhetaiaClean Energy Prize, Contests and academic competitions, Energy, Alternative energy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E), Efficiency, Developing countries, Africa, Sloan School of ManagementMonica Pham: Advancing nuclear power and empowering girlshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/monica-pham-advancing-nuclear-power-and-empowering-girls-0421
Sophomore researches fusion energy and promotes STEM opportunities for young women.Fri, 21 Apr 2017 16:10:01 -0400Leda Zimmerman | Department of Nuclear Science and Engineeringhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/monica-pham-advancing-nuclear-power-and-empowering-girls-0421<p>When she was 16, Monica Pham mapped out her future. “My chemistry teacher was talking about how atoms could generate unlimited power,” Pham recalls. “I asked her what kind of person worked in this field, and when she said a nuclear engineer, I decided that’s what I wanted to be.”</p>
<p>Today, as a college sophomore pursuing a degree in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), Pham could not be happier with her decision. “That weird, defining moment in high school has worked out well for me, because with my interests in energy and engineering, NSE is a really great fit.”</p>
<p>In addition to her full plate of NSE classes,&nbsp;such as 22.01 (Introduction to Nuclear Engineering and Ionizing Radiation)&nbsp;and 22.06 (Engineering of Nuclear Systems),&nbsp;Pham is engaged in research at the Collaboration for Science and Technology with Accelerators and Radiation (CSTAR), a joint laboratory of NSE and the Plasma Science and Fusion Center.</p>
<div class="cms-placeholder-content-video"></div>
<p>“I remembered touring the CSTAR facility during freshman pre-orientation, and thought this would be a great way to get my first real experience in nuclear engineering,” Pham says.</p>
<p>Pham’s project, one of a number at CSTAR, is under the supervision of assistant professor Zachary Hartwig, and involves the development of a system for diagnosing materials used in tokamaks — nuclear fusion reactors. Fusion energy harnesses the power of super-hot plasma, the fuel of stars, to generate enormous amounts of energy. Tokamaks confine and control plasma through the use of magnetic fields.</p>
<p>Before fusion energy can become a viable source of energy, critical issues must be addressed. Hartwig’s research, part of a five-year study devised by NSE Professor Dennis Whyte, focuses on some central questions: What are the potentially destructive impacts of plasma on tokamak components, and can these effects be assessed inside the fiery furnace of a typically inaccessible tokamak chamber?</p>
<p>This is where Pham comes in. She is part of a team using a particle accelerator to blast a beam of atomic particles at materials used in tokamak components. This research is an initial step in developing a full-scale diagnostic technique to measure the impacts of harsh conditions on plasma-facing components in a major fusion facility.</p>
<p>“Because plasma is kind of crazy, there is a lot of erosion and deposition to these materials in a tokamak,” she says “Previous diagnostic techniques are all&nbsp;ex situ&nbsp;— you have to take components out of the chamber afterwards to see how plasma affected them — so this technique is novel and could really help with new fusion reactor designs.”</p>
<p>Some days Pham will help assemble the experiment, setting up the small metallic targets at the end of the accelerator beamline. Other days, she collects data from the detectors, plotting the intensity of the yield of atomic particles such as gamma radiation against the intensity of the accelerator beam.</p>
<p>“I’m learning a lot about how to set up and run experiments from them,” she says. “It’s both challenging and fun, especially when we have to troubleshoot an experiment that isn’t working as planned.”</p>
<p>After four straight terms on this project, Pham looks forward to the potential publication of research in which she has been involved. “One of the graduate students hopes to publish, including data I collected last year,” she says. “It would be kind of cool to be an undergraduate and a co-author.”</p>
<p>When not in class or in the laboratory, Pham makes time for the MIT chapter of the Society of Women Engineers. As festival chair, she sets up workshops and activities to engage girls and young women in science and engineering.</p>
<p>Pham recalls times during secondary school when she “was not taken as seriously as boys who wanted to go into engineering,” she says. “People would say to me, ‘Are you sure you want to do that; it seems pretty hard.’” As a result of these experiences, she says, “I want to empower girls to feel they belong in these fields.”</p>
<p>At such venues as the Cambridge Science Festival, and the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, Pham runs open houses intended to introduce girls both to fun science, like using lemon juice to polish a penny, and to female science and engineering role models such as herself. “Some kids ask what it’s like to be a woman engineer or an MIT student, and I tell them it’s really cool,” she says.</p>
<p>She has proof this outreach makes a difference. “One time I was helping an eight-year-old girl build a mini-catapult, and she turned to me and said, ‘I was going to ask for a robot for Christmas and now I want to build a robot myself,’” says Pham. “It was an amazing moment, and showed me my efforts could really pay off.”</p>
“I want to empower girls to feel they belong in these fields,” says Monica Pham, a sophomore in nuclear science and engineering.Photo: Susan YoungProfile, Nuclear science and engineering, Nuclear power and reactors, Undergraduate, Energy, Fusion, Women in STEM, Women, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, School of Engineering, StudentsClean power planninghttps://news.mit.edu/2017/clean-power-planning-0420
A new study details why it’s prudent to invest in carbon-free electricity now.Thu, 20 Apr 2017 17:45:01 -0400Mark Dwortzan | MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Changehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/clean-power-planning-0420<p>With a single executive order issued at the end of March, the Trump administration launched a robust effort to roll back Obama-era climate policies designed to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) emissions. Chief among those policies is the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan/clean-power-plan-existing-power-plants" target="_blank">Clean Power Plan</a>, which targets coal and natural gas-fired electric power plants that account for about 40 percent of the nation’s CO<sub>2</sub> emissions. Private and public-sector investors may see the executive order as a green light to double down on relatively cheap fossil fuels and reduce holdings in more costly, climate-friendly, non-carbon generation technologies such as wind, solar and nuclear. But they may want to think twice before making such transactions.</p>
<p>Electricity-sector investments in fossil-fuel-based infrastructure tend to be for the long-term, directing funds to power plants designed to run for more than 40 years, or 10 presidential terms. Return on such investments could be significant if U.S. emissions regulations remain weak (e.g. Trump’s rollbacks persist in coming decades), but could shrink considerably if stringent, emissions-limiting climate policies are imposed for a substantial fraction of a plant’s lifetime. Such policies would boost return on investment in non-carbon electricity generation technologies; but without them, clean energy investors run the risk of incurring unnecessary costs in technologies that are ultimately not required.</p>
<p>With long-term carbon-reduction policies uncertain, what is the wisest course of action for near-term electricity sector investment? Double down on carbon, go carbon-free, or mix it up?</p>
<p>By explicitly considering uncertainty in the future policy landscape, a <a href="https://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=3028" target="_blank">new study</a> in <em>The Energy Journal</em> by present and former researchers at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change offers a picture of the relative risks of these choices, and how much non-carbon generation should be developed in the near-term to minimize those risks. Using a novel framework that incorporates a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the U.S. economy into a computer program that evaluates decisions in the electric power sector under policy uncertainty, the researchers determined that the optimal electricity sector investment for the next decade would allocate 20-30 percent of new generation to non-carbon sources.</p>
<p>That’s how much electricity sector decision-makers must hedge their bets to balance the risk of overinvesting in non-carbon electric power in a world where climate policy turns out to be weak, with the risk of underinvesting in non-carbon electric power in a world where climate policy is stringent.</p>
<p>“The risk of underinvesting in non-carbon is greater than the risk in overinvesting,” says <a href="https://globalchange.mit.edu/about-us/personnel/morris-jennifer" target="_blank">Jennifer Morris</a>, the study’s lead author and a research scientist at the Joint Program. “If you build a lot of non-carbon infrastructure and there’s not a strict policy, then you have sunk some of your investment in unnecessary costs, but the operational costs are low and you’ll continue to use that generation. But if you overinvest in fossil fuel infrastructure and a strict policy such as a carbon tax is imposed that requires dramatic emissions reductions, you’ll end up with a lot of stranded assets. You’ll need to not only shut down power plants but also invest more in non-carbon technology, which will cost you more because you didn’t make previous non-carbon investments.”</p>
<p>Few previous studies on electricity investments consider uncertainty in future carbon emissions limits, and of those that do, most use only a few scenarios and/or only examine the electric power sector, not the full economy, and therefore are not able to quantify economy-wide impacts. In this work, MIT researchers use a CGE model that represents the U.S. full economy and embed it within a dynamic programming framework where policy uncertainty is represented by sampling possible future carbon emissions limits. In this framework, different policy scenarios are each associated with a unique probability or likelihood of being implemented.</p>
<p>The model systematically explores different electric power investment decisions under sampled policy scenarios, and for each decision/policy combination, computes and compares cumulative costs over two investment periods extending from 2015 to 2030. Based on this analysis, the model identifies the optimal initial investment decision. Results show a clear advantage in shifting a considerable amount of investment dollars from carbon to non-carbon power sources in the near-term.</p>
<p>“Today there’s a lot of uncertainty in how policy will unfold,” says Morris. “Decision-makers can either do nothing or allocate electricity sector investments to be best positioned for potential future policy changes. The key message of this study is that in the face of future climate policy uncertainty, it is wise to invest in some non-carbon generation now.”</p>
<p>The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, and National Science Foundation.</p>
Photo: WalterPro4755/FlickrResearch, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, Energy, Greenhouse gases, Carbon, Sustainability, Renewable energy, Climate models, Environment, Policy, Alternative energy, Emissions, Pollution, Department of Energy (DoE), National Science Foundation (NSF)Exelon Generation supports research on advanced nuclear fuel cladding coatingshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/exelon-generation-provides-funding-research-advanced-nuclear-fuel-cladding-coatings-0419
Exelon Generation funding for the MIT Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems could transform the performance of the fuel cladding in light water reactors.Wed, 19 Apr 2017 16:50:01 -0400Department of Nuclear Science and Engineeringhttps://news.mit.edu/2017/exelon-generation-provides-funding-research-advanced-nuclear-fuel-cladding-coatings-0419<p>Assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering Michael Short and collaborators — professors Bilge Yildiz, Matteo Bucci, and Evelyn Wang, as well as the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory and the Westinghouse Electric Company — have received funding from Exelon Generation to support research which could transform the performance of the fuel cladding in light water reactors (LWRs).</p>
<p>Four known issues can impact the safe and reliable operation of LWR fuel cladding. They include fretting and wear from grid-to-rod-fretting and foreign material; the buildup of porous corrosion deposits; hydrogen absorption; and boiling crisis. Fretting can wear through the fuel cladding, while deposits and hydrogen absorption can lead to corrosion-based fuel failure, respectively. Finally, a “boiling crisis” is when the normally bubbly mode of coolant boiling, called sub-cooled nucleate boiling, transitions to film boiling, insulating the fuel with a layer of steam and worsening heat transfer.</p>
<p>All four issues can and have caused failure of fuel cladding, leading to radioactive releases into the coolant and costing reactor operators over $1 million per day of downtime to fix the problem. The goal of the MIT project is to address all four issues at once by developing a viable solution, consisting of engineered cladding surface coatings and micro/nano geometric modifications to reduce or eliminate all four problems, within three years. The team will design a set of coatings and surface modifications for Zircaloy-based fuel cladding currently in use. The combination will simultaneously:</p>
<ul>
<li>minimize or prevent buildup of unidentified deposits and hydrogen pickup, which in turn will increase the lifetime, stability, and power density of the fuel;</li>
<li>improve hardness to prevent grid-to-rod fretting, which occurs when the spacer grid (a metal piece which separates the fuel rods) and the rods themselves vibrate and wear holes into the metal; and</li>
<li>maximize critical heat flux (critical heat flux describes the thermal limit of a phenomenon where a phase change occurs during heating) to improve hear transfer.</li>
</ul>
<p>This targeted three-year development time from lab-scale tests to commercial reactor implementation is unprecedented. The normal process for most new reactor components is between 10 and 15 years.</p>
<p>The MIT team will work with fuel vendor Westinghouse Electric Company and the nation’s largest nuclear operator Exelon Generation to test and identify the best coating for commercialization and use in a commercial U.S. reactor by 2019. The project brings together MIT researchers from the departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and the MIT Nuclear Reactor Lab.</p>
<p>The funding will support research in the&nbsp;<a href="http://energy.mit.edu/lcec/canes/" target="_blank">Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems</a>, one of the MIT Energy Initiative’s eight&nbsp;<a href="http://energy.mit.edu/lcec/" target="_blank">Low-Carbon Energy Centers</a>, which Exelon&nbsp;<a href="http://energy.mit.edu/news/mitei-and-exelon-collaborate-on-clean-energy-research-through-miteis-low-carbon-energy-centers/" target="_blank">joined as a member in 2016</a>&nbsp;to advance key enabling technologies for addressing climate change.</p>
Michael Short, assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering at MITPhoto: Susan YoungResearch, Funding, Grants, Faculty, Energy, Nuclear Reactor Lab, Nuclear power and reactors, Nuclear science and engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, DMSE, Mechanical engineering, MIT Energy InitiativeCombined energy and water system could provide for millionshttps://news.mit.edu/2017/system-fresh-water-renewable-energy-storage-drought-stricken-regions-0418
Analysis shows system could economically bring fresh water and renewable energy storage to drought-stricken coastal regions worldwide.
Tue, 18 Apr 2017 16:45:00 -0400Kelley Travers | MIT Energy Initiativehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/system-fresh-water-renewable-energy-storage-drought-stricken-regions-0418<p>Many highly populated coastal regions around the globe suffer from severe drought conditions. In an effort to deliver fresh water to these regions, while also considering how to produce the water efficiently using clean-energy resources, a team of researchers from MIT and the University of Hawaii has created a detailed analysis of a symbiotic system that combines a pumped hydropower energy storage system and reverse osmosis desalination plant that can meet both of these needs in one large-scale engineering project.</p>
<p>The researchers, who have <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213138816300492" target="_blank">shared their findings</a> in a paper published in <em>Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments</em>, say this kind of combined system could ultimately lead to cost savings, revenues, and job opportunities.</p>
<p>The basic idea to use a hydropower system to also support a reverse osmosis desalination plant was first proposed two decades ago by Professor Masahiro Murakami of Kochi University of Technology, but was never developed in detail.</p>
<p>"Back then, renewables were too expensive and oil was too cheap," says the paper’s co-author Alexander Slocum, the Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. "There was not the extreme need and sense of urgency that there is now with climate change, increasing populations and waves of refugees fleeing drought and war-torn regions."</p>
<p>Recognizing the potential of the concept now, Slocum and his co-authors — Maha Haji, Sasan Ghaemsaidi, and Marco Ferrara of MIT; and A Zachary Trimble of the University of Hawaii — developed a detailed engineering, geographic, and economic model to explore the size and costs of the system and enable further analysis to evaluate its feasibility at any given site around the world.</p>
<p>Typically, energy and water systems are considered separately, but combining the two has the potential to increase efficiency and reduce capital costs. Termed an "integrated pumped hydro reverse osmosis (IPHRO) system," this approach uses a lined reservoir placed in high mountains near a coastal region to store sea water, which is pumped up using excess power from renewable energy sources or nuclear power stations. When energy is needed by the electric grid, water flows downhill to generate hydroelectric power. With a reservoir elevation greater than 500 meters, the pressure is great enough to also supply a reverse osmosis plant, eliminating the need for separate pumps. An additional benefit is that the amount of water typically used to generate power is about 20 times the amount needed for creating fresh water. That means the brine outflow from the reverse osmosis plant can be greatly diluted by the water flowing through the hydroelectric turbines before it discharges back into the ocean, which reduces reverse osmosis outflow system costs.</p>
<p>As part of their research, Slocum’s team developed an algorithm that calculates a location's distance from the ocean and mountain height to explore areas around the world where IPHRO systems could be installed. Additionally, the team has identified possible IPHRO system locations with potential for providing power and water — based on the U.S. average of generating 50 kilowatt-hours of energy and 500 liters of fresh water per day — to serve 1 million people. In this scenario, a reservoir at 500 meters high would only need to be one square kilometer in size and 30 meters deep.</p>
<p>The team's analysis determined that in Southern California, all power and water needs can actually be met for 28 million people. An IPHRO system could be located in the mountains along the California coast or in Tijuana, Mexico, and would additionally provide long-term construction and renewable energy jobs for tens of thousands of people. Findings show that to build this system, the cost would be between $5,000 and $10,000 per person served. This would cover the cost of all elements of the system — including the renewable energy sources, the hydropower system, and the reverse osmosis system — to provide each person with all necessary renewable electric power and fresh water.</p>
<p>Working with colleagues in Israel and Jordan under the auspices of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) program, the team has studied possible sites in the Middle East in detail, as abundant fresh water and continuous renewable energy could help bring stability to the region. An IPHRO system could potentially form the foundation for stable economic growth, providing local jobs and trade opportunities and, as hypothesized in Slocum’s article, IPHRO systems could possibly help mitigate migration issues as a direct result of these opportunities.</p>
<p>"Considering the cost per refugee in Europe is about 25,000 euros per year and it takes several years for a refugee to be assimilated, an IPHRO system that is built in the Middle East to anchor a new community and trading partner for the European Union might be a very good option for the world to consider," Slocum says. "If we create a sustainable system that provides clean power, water, and jobs for people, then people will create new opportunities for themselves where they actually want to live, and the world can become a much nicer place."</p>
<p>This work is available as an <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213138816300492" target="_blank">open access article on <em>ScienceDirect</em></a>, thanks to a grant by the S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation through the MIT Energy Initiative, which also supported the class from which this material originated. The class has also been partially supported by MISTI and the cooperative agreement between the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology and MIT.&nbsp;</p>
A joint team of American, Israeli, and Jordanian students worked together to study possible integrated pumped hydro reverse osmosis (IPHRO) system site locations around the world.Photo courtesy of Alexander Slocum.MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), Mechanical engineering, School of Engineering, Energy, Water, Renewable energy, Global, International development, Research, Desalination, SHASS, International initiativesResearchers design coatings to prevent pipeline clogginghttps://news.mit.edu/2017/researchers-design-coatings-prevent-pipeline-blowouts-0414
Solution developed at MIT could stop buildup of hydrate ices that slow or block oil and gas flow.Fri, 14 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400David Chandler | MIT News Officehttps://news.mit.edu/2017/researchers-design-coatings-prevent-pipeline-blowouts-0414<p>When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig suffered a catastrophic explosion and blowout on April 21, 2010, leading to the worst oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, the well’s operators thought they would be able to block the leak within a few weeks. On May 9 they succeeded in lowering a 125-ton containment dome over the broken wellhead. If that measure had worked, it would have funneled the leaking oil into a pipe that carried it to a tanker ship above, thus preventing the ongoing leakage that made the spill so devastating. Why didn’t the containment work as expected?</p>
<p>The culprit was an icy mixture of frozen water and methane, called a methane clathrate. Because of the low temperatures and high pressure near the seafloor, the slushy mix built up inside the containment dome and blocked the outlet pipe, preventing it from redirecting the flow. If it hadn’t been for that methane clathrate, the containment might have worked, and four months of unabated leakage and widespread ecological devastation might have been prevented.</p>
<p>Now, a team of researchers at MIT has come up with a solution that might prevent such a disastrous outcome the next time such a leak occurs. It may also prevent blockages inside oil and gas pipelines that can lead to expensive shutdowns to clear a pipe, or worse, to pipeline rupture from a buildup of pressure.</p>
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<p>The new method of preventing the icy buildup is described in a paper in the journal <em>ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces</em>, in a paper by associate professor of mechanical engineering Kripa Varanasi, postdoc Arindam Das, and recent graduates Taylor Farnham SB ’14 SM ’16 and Srinivas Bengaluru Subramanyam PhD ’16.</p>
<p>The key to the new system is coating the inside of the pipe with a layer of a material that promotes spreading of a water-barrier layer along the pipe’s inner surface. This barrier layer, the team found, can effectively prevent the adhesion of any ice particles or water droplets to the wall and thus thwart the buildup of clathrates that could slow or block the flow.</p>
<p>Unlike previous methods, such as heating of the pipe walls, depressurization, or using chemical additives, which can be expensive and potentially polluting, the new method is completely passive — that is, once in place it requires no further addition of energy or material. The coated surface attracts liquid hydrocarbons that are already present in the flowing petroleum, creating a thin surface layer that naturally repels water. This prevents the ices from ever attaching to the wall in the first place.</p>
<p>Existing prevention measures, known as flow assurance measures, “are expensive or environmentally unfriendly,” says Varanasi, and currently the use of those measures “runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars” every year. Without those measures, hydrates can build up so that they reduce the flow rate, which can reduce revenues, and if they create blockages then that “can lead to catastrophic failure,” Varanasi says. “It’s a major problem for the industry, for both safety and reliability.”</p>
<p>The problem could become even greater, says Das, the paper’s lead author, because methane hydrates themselves, which are abundant in many locations such as continental shelves, are seen as a huge new potential fuel source, if methods can be devised to extract them. “The reserves themselves substantially overshadow all known reserves [of oil and natural gas] on land and in deep water,” he says.</p>
<p>But such deposits would be even more vulnerable to freezing and plug formation than existing oil and gas wells. Preventing these icy buildups depends critically on stopping the very first particles of clathrate from adhering to the pipe: “Once they attach, they attract other particles” of clathrate, and the buildup takes off rapidly, says Farnham. “We wanted to see how we could minimize the initial adhesion on the pipe walls.”</p>
<p>The approach is similar to that being used in a company Varanasi established to commercialize earlier work from his lab, which creates coatings for containers that prevent the contents — anything from ketchup or honey to paint and agrochemicals — from sticking to the container walls. That system involves two steps: first creating a textured coating on the container walls, and then adding a lubricant that gets trapped by the texture and prevents contents from adhering.</p>
<p>The new pipeline system is similar to that, Varanasi explains, but in this case “we are using the liquid that’s in the environment itself,” rather than applying a lubricant to the surface. The key characteristic in clathrate formation is the presence of water, he says, so as long as the water can be kept away from the pipe wall, clathrate buildup can be stopped. And the liquid hydrocarbons present in the petroleum, as long as they cling to the wall thanks to a chemical affinity of the surface coating, can effectively keep that water away.</p>
<p>“If the oil [in the pipeline] is made to spread more readily on the surface, then it forms a barrier film between the water and the wall,” Varanasi says. In lab tests, which used a proxy chemical for the methane because the actual methane clathrates form under high-pressure conditions that are hard to reproduce in the lab, the system performed very effectively, the team says. “We didn’t see any hydrates adhering to the substrates,” Varanasi says.</p>
<p>The research was funded by the Italian energy company Eni S.p.A. through the MIT Energy Initiative.</p>
A new surface coating developed by Kripa Varanasi and his team causes water to bead up on the inner surface of a pipe rather than spreading out. This prevents the formation of ices that could lead to a clog in an oil pipeline or well.Image courtesy of the researchersSchool of Engineering, Research, Mechanical engineering, Oil and gas, Pollution, Energy, Environment, Sustainability, Physics